
Class 
Book 1 



i'i;i;si',yii-:i> iiy 



THE 



POETICAL WORKS 



ROBERT MONTGOMERY. 



OXFORD. 

SECOND EDITION. 



Quse toto seculo famosa radias, 
En ! ad te clamito, si forsan audias ; 
Non Romam alloquor urbem egregiam, 
Non villam Cecropis, non academiam, 
Verum te maximam Anglorum gloriam 
Alumnus invoco, matrem Oxoniam. 

Tryvytham. 

Ye sacred Nurseries of blooming youth ! 

In whose collegiate shelter England's flow'rs 

Expand — enjoying through their vernal hours 

The air of liberty, the light of truth ; 

Much have ye suffer'd from time's gnawing tooth, 

Yet, O ye spires of Oxford ! domes and tow'rs ! 

Gardens and groves ! your presence overpow'rs. 

Wordsworth. 



OXFORD 



A POEM, 



ROBERT MONTGOMERY, 

OF LINC. COLL. OXON. 

AUTHOR OF " THE OMNIPRESENCE OF THE DEITY, 
" SATAN," &C. 



SECOND EDITION. 



OXFORD, 

PRINTED BY S. COLLINGWOOD, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY, 

AND PUBLISHED BY WHITTAKER AND CO. LONDON \ AND 

BLACKWOOD, EDINBURGH. 

MDCCCXXXI. 



p> 



CHANCELLOR, 

MASTERS, AND SCHOLARS 

OF THE 

UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD, 

THIS POEM 

IS MOST RESPECTFULLY 

DEDICATED 

BY THEIR OBEDIENT SERVANT, 

THE AUTHOR. 



ANALYSIS OF PART I. 

Intellectual greatness — the homage due to any esta- 
blishment tending to promote it — Oxford — feelings and 
associations awakened by its first appearance — its mental 
quiet — its literary Past — studies — ancient and modern 
learning — classical bigots — system of study and examina- 
tion — the necessity of one general standard — reason why 
men of genius have often contemned it — mind independ- 
ent of circumstance — First origin of the University — its 
progress under Alfred, till the time of William of Nor- 
mandy — present appearance — view from the Radcliffe — 
New College Chapel and service — Royal visit in 1814. — 
Biographical associations — Illustrations of the same in Ad- 
dison, Steele, Collins, Johnson, Sir Philip Sydney, Ben 
Jonson, and Locke — Origin of Locke's famous Essay — 
intellectual society — a contrast — Canning — Davenant — - 
Wesley — Hervey — Denham — Chatham — Thomas Warton 
— Lisle Bowles — Country clergymen — their seclusion how 
fondly anticipated — a scene suggesting such anticipation — 
Blenheim — Balliol — Ridley and Latimer — their martyr- 
dom — Evelyn — Southey — the wisdom of literary retire- 
ment, contrasted with the rivalries of the literary world — 
female authorship — a characteristic sketch — return to bio- 
graphical associations, which conclude with Heber — his 
early life — collegiate course — pastoral character, and death 
in India. 



OXFORD, 

PART I. 

W HAT makes the glory of a mighty Land, 

Her people famous, and her hist'ry grand ? 

Is it, that Earth has felt her vast control 

Far as the wind can sweep, or ocean roll ; 

That ships and merchandise her ports bedeck, 

And Navies thunder at her awful beck ! 

That Splendor walks each street, arrays each dome, 

And in her temples boasts a second Rome ? 

Though Pow'r and Greatness, those almighty two, 



10 OXFORD. part 

That move the world, and teach what Man can do, 
In evVy age have thus some Empires blest, 
And Alp-like rear'd their thrones above the rest ; 
Yet, what remains of all that once hath been ? 
The billows welter where the ports were seen ! 
The wild-grass quivers o'er their mangled piles, 
And Winter moans along the archless aisles ; 
Where once they flourished Ruins grimly tell, 
And shade the air with melancholy spell, 
While from their wreck a tide of feeling rolls 
In awful wisdom through reflective souls ! 

What then alone omnipotently reigns, 
When Empires grovel on deserted plains, 



paeti. OXFORD. 11 

In sun-like glory to outdare the night 

That Time engenders o'er their vanish'd might ? 

'Tis Mind ! an immortality below, 

That gilds the past, and bids the future glow ; 

'Tis Mind ! heroic, pure, devoted Mind, 

To God appealing for corrupt mankind, 

Reflecting back the image that He gave 

Ere sin began, or earth became a slave ! 

Exalting thought ! when ages are no more, 
Like sunken billows on a far-off shore, 
A second life, in lofty prose or song, 
Their glories bear, to light the world along ! 
And ever thus may spirit be refin'd ; 



12 OXFORD. par 

For what is Godhead, but consummate mind ? 
Or Heaven, but one surpassing realm of thought, 
With each perfection of His wisdom fraught ? 
Not what we have, but what our natures,/^/, 
By truth unfolded for sublimest zeal, 
Developes all which makes our being great, 
And links a human to immortal state. 
Than this, could fancy weave a darker curse ? — 
That man is meaner than the universe I 
Creation is Eternal Will, express'd 
In forms of matter which were deem'd the best ; 
Within, is spirit ; all without, we know 
Forms the frail vision of a fleeting show : 
Nothing so vast amid creation found 



part i. OXFORD. 13 

As That which thinketh, when we gaze around ! 

Though bright the Earth, and beautiful her frame, 

From thought divine her fair existence came ; 

Then do we not with Deity unite, 

In fixing Mind the centre of delight, 

From whose pure depth the rays of reason dart, 

O'er Nature shine, and half her hues impart ? 

For thus, the Spirit on her wing sublime 

Above the reach of earth, and roar of time, 

In that deep energy may proudly share 

Which featur'd worlds, and all that formeth there ! 

If then from Intellect alone arise 

The noblest worth a Nation's heart can prize, 
c 



14 OXFORD. par 

In tow'ry dimness, gothic, vast, or grand, 

Behold her Palaces of learning stand ! 

When day was dying into sunset glow 

I first beheld them in their beauteous show, 

The massy glories of each gorgeous pile, 

And thought — how noble is our native Isle ! 

A silent worship o^r my spirit came, 

While feelings, far too exquisite for name, 

Exultingly began their rapt control, 

And flutter'd like faint music in the soul ! — 

Where Greatness trod, is hallow'd ground to me ; 

There can I lift the heart, and bow the knee, 

Awake the Past to all her living might, 

And feed my fancy with unearthly sight, 



parti. OXFORD. 15 

Restore the features of her famous dead, 
Nor take a kingdom for the tear I shed ! 

And how reposeful is the haunted spot 

Where life is mental, and the world forgot ! 

A spirit wafted from collegiate bow'rs 

And the dim shadow of her ancient tow'rs 

To Alma Mater museful calm impart, 

That makes her scene harmonious with the heart. 

The very air seems eloquently fraught 

With the deep silence of devoted thought ; 

While all around her, grand as eye desires, 

The mind ennobles, or the heart inspires. 

And here, how many a youthful Soul began 
c2 



16 OXFORD. part i 

To sketch the drama of the future man ; 

How many an eye o'er coming years hath smil'd, 

And sparkled, as incessant hope beguiPd ! 

The star-like spirits, whose enduring light 

Beams on the world, and turns her darkness bright, 

In radiant promise here began to rise, 

And glow ambitious for eternal skies ! 

Oh ! none whose souls have felt a mighty name 

Thrill to their centre with its sound of fame ; 

Whose hearts have warm'd at wisdom, truth, or worth. 

And all that makes the heaven we meet on earth, 

Can tread the ground by genius often trod, 

Nor feel a nature more akin to God ! — 

Here in their blended magic float along 



parti. OXFORD. 17 

Pindaric rapture and Virgilian song ; 

Still Horner charms as when he first prevail'd, 

And honour'd Greece her idol poet hail'd : 

See Athens in her classic bloom revive, 

Her sages worshipp'd, and her bards alive ! 

See Rome triumphant, but with banner furl'd, 

Awake her genius to enchant a world ! 

There are who see no intellectual rays 

Flash from the spirit-light of other days ; 

Who deem no age transcendent as their own, 

And high the present o'er the past enthrone. 

Yet, not in vain the world hath aye adored 

The treasur'd wisdom ages gone afford ; 
c3 



18 OXFORD. part 

Or lov'd the freshness of that youthful time 

When Nature thrill'd as man became sublime ! 

For then the elements of mind were new, 

And fancy from their unworn magic drew ; 

Creation's self was one unrifled theme 

To fire a passion, or to frame a dream ; 

As yet unhaunted by inquiring thought, 

Each track of mind with mental bloom was fraught ; 

The first in nature were the first to feel 

Impassion'd wonder and romantic zeal; 

Hence matchless vigour nerv'd the living page 

That won the worship of a future age ; 

While Genius moulded with a master hand 

The primal elements of pure and grand : — 



parti. OXFORD. 19 

From ancient lore see modern learning rise. 
The last we honour, but the first we prize. 

Then long adorM, in this august retreat 
May Greece and Rome for high communion meet ; 
Long may their forceful page and free-born style 
From year to year succeeding youth beguile ; 
The judgment form, uncertain taste direct, 
Teach Truth to feel, and Fancy to reflect : 
And Learning, hallow'd by immortal fame, 
See England glory in her Oxford name ! 

Yet not forsaken be the proud career 

That circles through the realm of thought severe j 



20 OXFORD. parti. 

The studies vast which measure earth and sky, 

Or open worlds on the undaunted eye !— 

Which more offends ? — the bigot who can read 

No volume from the dust of ages freed ; 

Or he who owns no intellectual grace, 

But makes a cargo of the human race, 

And values man like produce from the ground, — 

'Tis hard to say, yet both, alas ! are found. 

The dark idolater of ancient time, 

And solemn epicure in prose or rhyme, 

The groping pedant with a gloomy eye, 

Who whines an elegy o'er days gone by, — 

Oh ! still from Oxford be the race remov'd, 

And nobler far her gifted scions prov'd. 



parti. OXFORD. 21 

What soul so vacant, so profoundly dull, 

What brain so wither'd in a barren skull, 

As his who, dungeon'd in the gloom of eld, 

From all the light of living mind withheld, 

Can deem it half an intellectual shame 

To glow at Milton's worth, or Shakespeare's name ! 

And thinks a genius most divinely strong 

Hath made himself to other times belong ?t— 

Yet, tried by nature, proves a mere machine 

Of ancient dulness and of modern spleen. 

Farewell to bigots ! whatsoe'er their hue, 
Who darken learning, and disgrace it too ; 
Another charge let Alma Mater own 



22 OXFORD. part 

By frequent sages on her wisdom thrown : — 
Alike one standard for the great and small 
Her laws decree, by which she judges all ; 
Hence in one mould must oft confound at once 
The daring thinker with the plodding dunce ; 
The soaring Mind must sink into a plan, 
Forget her wings, and crawl where dulness can ; 
Those bolder traits, original and bright, 
Fade into dimness when they lose the light 
Of open, free, and self- created day, 
Where all the tints of character can play ; 
While creeping plodders, who have never bred 
One single fancy to refresh the head, 
But toil'd contented o'er the barren ground 



parti. OXFORD. 

Where Commonplace pursues her petty round, 
With smirking valor meet their judgment day, 
When talent melts in nervous gloom away ! 

Yet, what could Education's art provide 
For countless minds by varying standard tried ? 
For public weal, not individual mind, 
As mental nurse was Oxford first design'd ; 
And blindly wrong would be her guardian eye, 
To love the great, but pass the lesser by ; 
From each due toil impassion'd genius save, 
And crown for merit what mere nature gave. 
Not all alike discerning Heav^ endows, 
Nor equal mind to equal heart allows : 



24 OXFORD. part i 

Full oft th' ingenuous pang, the noble tear, 

Or modest doubt, the phantom child of fear, 

To humble Worth a consecration lends, 

That proves for lost renown sublime amends ; — 

Let mind be nurs'd, though doorn'd a narrow sphere, 

And what his Maker gives, let man revere ! 

Allow that genius wears a curbless soul 
That chafes in fetters, and defies control ; 
And, haughty as the mountain eagle chain'd, 
Hath evYy empire but her own disdain'd. 
Thous'h customs old, like ancient roots are found 
With stubborn grasp to cling to native ground, 
Fain would her boldness to herself be rule, 



part i. OXFORD. 25 

And Energy her own majestic school ! 
But when hath Mind such education lost, 
However cabin'd, and however cross'd ? 
Alike triumphant over college wall, 
The mouldy cellar, and plebeian stall, 
We mark the soul of Inspiration rise, 
Expand her wings, and revel in the skies ! 

Then vainly let the pow'rless sophist frown, 
To hide one ray of Oxford's fair renown, 
Or quote some verse to vindicate his cause, 
Of scornful meaning at her ancient laws. — 
Spirits have hVd, who could not suffer chains ; 
The fire that fever'd their electric veins 



26 OXFORD. parti. 

BuriVd all too restless for obedient thought a , 

And hence the solace indignation brought. 

Yet when was order known, or due control, 

To force divinity from out the soul ? 

Oh ! little think they, how sublimely pure, 

In godlike state above the world secure, 

That earthless nature which they genius call ; 

In vain the tides of circumstance appal, — 

Though clouds repress, and darksome woe detain, 

The Soul remounts, and is herself again ! 

Go, ask of Ages, what made dungeons bright, 

Vile sufTrance sweet, and danger a delight, 

Created thunders to o'erawe the sky, 

Unloosen'd storms, and let the whirlwinds fly, 



part i. OXFORD. 27 

Yea, forc'd the universe to feel her nod, 
And dar'd a while to imitate a God ! — 
'Twas Spirit, independently sublime, 
The King of nature, and the Lord of time ! 

Then pause a while, and reverently view, 
Though dimly faded, and of ancient hue, 
The records hinting through oblivion's eld, 
When Oxford first her founded Halls beheld, 
From age to age how college piles appear'd, 
Till, lo ! a University was rear'd. 
Ere yet the music of Messiah's name 
Had thrill'd the world, heroic Brutus came b 
With Grecian sages and a kindred band, 



28 OXFORD. part 

To fix their dwelling in our Eden land ; 

And Greeklade was the destin'd home they chose c , 

Where mind could revel, and the heart repose ; 

Till, lur'd away by some far lovelier scene, 

Where rivers wander'd, and the woods hung green, 

By groves untrodden, whose Athenian shade 

For silence and monastic dreams was made, 

A city rose beside the haunt ador'd, 

Where Memprick built what Vortiger restor'd. 

Thus early did renowned Oxford shine d , 



Grow dear to sages, and the Muse divine ; 



Here Caesar's self might chance his Rome recall, 
And England triumph as she tutor'd Gaul ; 



part i. OXFORD. 29 

And fain would Fancy, when her lingering eye 

Roams in the shadow of the days gone by, 

Rest on the form, the feature, and the dress, 

The hood, the toga, all that might express 

The monkish drama of collegiate prime e , — 

But Truth is darkness in the depth of time : 

Not then, as now, did massive temples frown 

In the high grandeur of their huge renown, 

But simpler dwellings, out of convents sprung, 

Or mansions hirM, received her studious young ; 

And each, as added numbers swelM their fame, 

Was duly govern'd, and a Hall became. 

Here in rude nurture ancient Worthies dwelt, 

And solemn dreams of classic glory felt ; 
d3 



30 OXFORD. f 

Here Gildas liv'd ; and unforgotten Bede, 
And elder spirits whom proud ages read, 
First soar'd aloft on elevated mind, 
To see the Heav^ that hover'd o'er mankind ! 

Awaken'd thus, our British Athens rose, 
When England, fetter'd by her ocean foes, 
Beheld a wilderness usurp the plain. 
Where cruel Saxon and incursive Dane 
Left ravish'd Piles all desolately grand, 
And breatlVd a sterner spirit o'er the land. 
No longer now the banish'd Muses seen, — 
A darkness hung where mental day had been ; 
Till kingly Alfred from his island throne, 



parti. OXFORD. 31 

Saw England smiling, and the seas her own ! 

Then Peace woke radiant from the clouds of War, 

As brightly rose her intellectual star ; 

Once more the heav'n of studious thought began, 

And Wisdom gloried as she gaz'd on Man ! 

A patriot monarch, generously wise, 

Cheer'd the young Arts, and bade their temples rise ; 

Prompt at his wish, within her antique walls, 

Behold ! the grandeur of three founded Halls, 

Where Royalty with feudal Princes came, 

When first a Lecture lent those Halls a fame f . — 

Hence o'er his isle a soul-born impulse went, 

And Ign'rance pin'd in noble discontent. 

Meanwhile, the monarch woo'd from every clime, 



32 OXFORD. part i. 

Where Art had flourish'd cTer the blast of time, 

Her men of wisdom, whose presiding hand 

Might bid the energies of Soul expand : 

Lo ! on the waves, from bleak Ierne's home, 

In sailless bark, three wild enthusiasts roam ; 

By Alfred summon'd, they revere his call, 

Who brighten'd ages, and outlives them all ! — 

A second Oxford thus adorn'd our isle, 

And future Patrons rear'd each future pile, 

From king to king, till Norman William came, 

Who sack'd her treasure, but increas'd her fame s. 

And now, in zenith pomp, her stately town 

Hath fill'd all Europe with its far renown : — 

The Sun is up! behold a princely day, 



parti. OXFORD. 33 

And all things glorious in its glorious ray ; 
Ascend the RadclifiVs darkly- winding coil 
Of countless steps, nor murmur at the toil ; 
For lo ! a scene, when that ascension's o'er, 
Where none can gaze, nor in that gaze adore. — 
There, from the base of her commanding dome, 
O'er many a mile the feasting eye may roam, 
While music- wing'd, the winds of freshness sound, 
Like airy haunters of the region round. 
Yon heav'n is azur'd to one dazzling die, 
Beneath — a splendor that surpasses sky ! 
Spire, towV, and steeple, roofs of radiant tile, 
The costly temple, and collegiate pile, 
In sumptuous mass of mingled form and hue, 



34 OXFORD. part i. 

Await the wonder of thy sateless view ! 

Far to the west, autumnal meadows wind, 

Whose fading tints fall tender on the mind ; 

And near, a hoary tow'r with dial'd side, 

And nearer still, in many-window^ pride, 

All Souls, with central tow'rs superbly grand : 

But see ! the clouds are born, — they break, — expand! 

And sunshine, welcom'd by each ancient pile, 

Like Past and Present when they meet to smile, 

With tinting magic beautifully falls 

On fretted pinnacles, and fresco'd walls, 

Till dark St. Mary, with symmetric spire, 

Swells into glory as her shades retire, 

And Maudlin trees, that wave o'er Cherwell stream, 



parti. OXFORD. 35 

Flash on the view and flutter in the beam ! — 
In yellow faintness, lo ! that sun-burst dies, 
The vision changes with the change of skies ; 
Again have Centuries their dominion won, 
As shadows triumph o'er the failing sun, 
Till College grandeur, veil'd in gloom sublime, 
Reigns in the darkness that is due to time ! 

And ev'ry where time-hallow'd temples rise, 
Whose stony pomp defeating Age defies. 
Go, mark the chapel by great Wykham rear'd 11 , 
Where once the grandest of the grand appear'd 
In all that Piety and Art could give, 
For eyes to worship, or a name to live. — 



36 OXFORD. pa 

What solemn beauty by the spirit felt ! 
While feelings into adoration melt, 
As in her depth of Gothic gloom we tread 
Amid the hush of ages which are dead. 

I well remember, when a stranger, first, 
The stately vision on my senses burst; 
From towVing lamps a noon-like radiance shone 
O'er pavement mottled with mosaic stone, 
And white-rob'd Choristers in due array, 
Whose vestments glitterM like the sheen of day. 
There, silver-voic , d, in many a heav'nward note, 
I heard religion on soft music float, 
Now faintly die, then freshly live again, 



parti. OXFORD. 37 

And grow almighty as the organ strain 
Came riverlike, in one impassion'd roll 
From the deep harmony of Handel's soul ! 

But thou, fair Oxford, never didst thou seem 

Begirt with glory in so grand a dream, 

As when proud heroes pac'd thy matchless town', 

While Europe echo'd with their high renown ! 

A morn of June ! and, magically gay, 

A heaVn of blueness to o'erarch the day, 

Whose smiles are mirror'd by that glorious street, 

Where, proudly deck'd, uncounted numbers meet 

Of plumed bands, whose warrior trappings shine, 

And hooded gownsmen, in majestic line. — 

E 



38 OXFORD. part 

But lo! he comes ! a Prince before them stands, 
Hark ! to the rapture of re-echoing hands, 
And high-ton'd cheers that revel round his way, 
While each eye beams a patriotic rayi ! 

'Tis noon — 'tis night — a day of grandeur spent 

In all that makes a day magnificent, — 

'Tis night : a thousand windows gleam and glow 

With pictur'd radiance, or transcendent show ; 

And lamp-wreath'd piles and blazing temples seem 

Like genii fabrics in some gorgeous dream ! 

But, oh ! to stand where Gloom and Silence drown 

The roaring gladness of the distant town ! — 

A sea of blackness settles o'er the heav'n, 



part i. OXFORD. 39 

Nor star is thron'd, nor changeful cloud is driv'n ; 

Dull, deep, and stagnant, in grim slumber laid, 

To pall a chaos looks that sky array'd ! — 

Beneath, illumin'd tow'rs and steeples rise, 

And tint the darkness with emerging dyes, 

That mix and melt in atmospheric glare, 

Till faintly wither'd into dusky air ; 

While green-arch^ groves, in verdant pomp of light, 

Present their beauty to the gaze of night. — 

The Midnight comes, and with her, sound and storm ! 

And cloudy phantoms, each a dreadful form ; 

From east to west earth-shaking thunders roll, 

And lightnings quiver from the glaring pole ; 

A rainy deluge rushes from the sky, 

e 2 



40 OXFORD. part 

A thousand lights in one wild darkness die ! 
Joy melts to gloom, and awe-smote thousands stand 
Beneath the shadow of th 1 Almighty hand ! 

And tell me, thou whose wand'ring feet have trod_, 
Like his who trembled on the ground of God, 
The hallow , d earth where classic glories shine 
Back on thy Spirit with their beam divine, — 
Hath Oxford, haunted by her long array 
Of memories that cannot glide away, 
No local magic to entrance thy mind, 
And make it prouder of thy human kind ? — 
Whate'er of good and glorious, learn'd or grand, 
Delighted ages and adorh'd the land, 



part i. OXFORD. 41 

Was foster'd here : — the senate, pulpit, bar, 

The scenes of ocean, and the storms of war, 

Wherever Mind hath high dominion shown, 

To counsel kingdoms, or secure a throne, 

There may Oxonia sons of glory hail, 

And see the spirit which she nurs'd, prevail * ! 

Forget a while the fever of the hour, 

Wake her dim gloom, and lo ! the Past hath pow'r : 

Around thee Bards and Sages muse or stray, 

And wind the garden that is walk'd to-day ; 

The pilgrim clouds, the time-worn trees that wave, 

Or banks whose beauty gleaming waters lave, 

Their eyes beheld: — do burning thoughts begin? 

Then dare to rival what you dream within ! 

* See " Biographical Summary," at the end of the volume. 



42 OXFORD. part i. 

Too vast her list, might pen achieve it all, 

Each form of memVy into life to call ; 

Yet fain would fondness with some imag'd few 

Partake a moment, and believe it true. — 

Adown yon path, beside the grassy sweep 

Of Maudlin park, where light deer couch and leap, 

And giant elms the haughty winds delay, 

There gentle Addison was wont to stray ; 

And thence, where now is heard the churning wheel. 

As writhingly the restless waters steal, 

His tree-lin'd walk of beauteous length began, 

For ever hallowM by that holy man !— 

In many a whirl hath autumn's whining blast 

From these fond trees their summer foliage cast, 



parti. OXFORD. 43 

And leafy show'rs now mournfully abound, 
In sallow redness scatter 'd o'er the ground ; 
Yet here full oft, the branches waving green, 
And heavVs blue magic smiling in between, 
The pensive rambler dream'd an hour away, 
Or wove the music of his Attic lay, 
Saw kCato's grandeur on his soul arise, 
And Heav , n half open to a heathen's eyes. 
Or, happier themes, whose ethic pureness glows 
With ev'ry tint that character bestows, 
From ancient lore his tender heart beguil'd, 
And lit his features when his fancy smil'd ! 
Nor be forgot who all his worth could feel, 
The friend of Addison, delightful Steele ; 



44 OXFORD. parti 

Whose classic morn let Merton's annals claim, 

Where first the drama woo'd him on to fame : 

More roughly hewn than his Athenian friend, 

And vent'ring oft where virtues never tend ; 

Yet warm of soul, and child-like to a tear 1 , 

As when it dropp'd upon a parent's bier : 

Now madly sunk in passion's deep excess, 

Now high in wisdom which a Saint might bless ; 

A mixture wild of all that man admires, 

Whose faults may warn him, while his fame inspires, 

Ere Steele began, what Addison pursu'd, 
A path still fresh with England's gratitude, 
Those day-born graces whose refinement blends 



part. i. OXFORD. 45 

The charm of manner with the soul of friends, 
La Casa first in Italy awoke, 
And sketched the courtier with a master stroke ; 
But next, the Gallic Theophrastus* threw 
A playful archness o'er the scene he drew, 
Dissected truth with satire's keenest knife, 
And mirror'd Nature on the glass of life : 
Then rose on English ground the gifted pair 
Who taught to either sex a softer air, 
Prov'd elegance to virtue's self ally'd, 
And lauglVd at Dulness, till her follies died ! 
O'er weeds and thorns that social life beset, 
And tease their martyr into vain regret, 
* La Bruy^re. 



46 OXFORD. parti 

Their morning smile satirically pass'd, 

Till fools turn'd wise, and fops were curd at last ! 

Nor small the debt Society should pay 

To him who flaps her buzzing flies away ; 

Those noisome insects on eternal wing, 

That hum at banquets, or in ball-rooms sting, 

Which, though they cannot heart or mind o , erpow , r, 

May fret the smoothness of the calmest hour. 

Here Collins too, whose wizard numbers roll m 
An earthless music o'er the dreaming soul, 
In melancholy loneness pin'd and thought 
Amid the darkness which his genius brought : 



parti. OXFORD. 47 

E'en now the curse was breeding in his brain, — 

A nerveless spirit, and a soul insane ! 

While moon-born fairies would around him throng, 

And genii haunt him in the hush of song : 

Ill-fated bard ! like Chatterton's thy doom, 

To seek for fame, and find it in the tomb ! 

To Pembroke turn, and what undying charm 

Breath'd from the past, shall there thy spirit warm ? — 

There Johnson dwelt ! the dignified and sage, 

The noblest honour of a noble age ; 

Whose mien and manners, though of graceless kind, 

Were all apart from his heroic mind ; 

They were the bark around some royal tree 



48 OXFORD. pari 

Whose branches glorying in th 1 heav'ns we see ! — 
Here livM and mus'd that unforgotten man n ! 
Might language speak what only feeling can, 
As here I view these venerable walls, 
And slow, as in some fane, my footstep falls, 
Young hearts would echo to a welcome strain, 
And feel, as I do, Johnson live again ! 
O'er Time's vast sea a cent'ry's waves have rolFd, 
And many a knell hath unregarded knoll'd, 
Since, fondly wrapt in meditative gloom, 
The Sage of England sat in this lone room : 
Yet, well may Fancy at yon ev^ing fire 
Behold him seated ; and when moods inspire, 
(As Sorrow droop'd, or Hope her wings unfurl'd,) 



part i. OXFORD. 49 

His spirit hover through the varied world, 

Of life and conduct, fortune, truth, or fate, 

His future glory, and his present state : 

Or when the noon-shine reign'd in golden pow'r, 

And dimly smiFd some melancholy towV, 

Muse at his window with far-wand'ring eye, 

And feel the freshness of enchanted sky ; 

Or, round the gateway woo admiring ears 

To listen, while he charm'd beyond his years, 

By spoken magic, or electric wit 

That flash'd severe, yet sparkled where it hit :— 

A bright deception ! far too often seen 

To hide the heart where agony has been : 

Oh ! hideous mockery the mind endures, 

F 



50 OXFORD. part i. 

To forge a smile whose merriment allures, 
To gild a moment with fictitious ray, 
Yet feel a viper on the spirit prey ! 
Departed Soul ! how oft when laughter fed 
Upon the frolic which thy fancy bred, 
And happy natures, as they saw thee smile, 
Seem'd mingling with thy sunny heart a while, 
Back to thy chamber didst thou darkly steal, 
And there the hell of thine own bosom feel ! 
Then sink to slumber with a burning brain, — 
To-morrow wake, and wear that smile again nn ! 

I know not why, but since a dream of fame, 
My heart hath gloried in great Johnson's name, 



parti. OXFORD. 51 

And deeper worship to his spirit vow'd 
Than others have to loftier worth allow'd. 
In what a mould was his high nature cast 
Who never ventur'd, but he all surpass'd ! 
And reign 1 d amid the realm of Mind alone, 
Nor left an equal to ascend his throne. 
How grandly deep, how tenderly divine ! 
The lofty meaning, the majestic line ! — 
A moral sweetness, a persuasive flow 
Of happy diction, whether joy or woe 
Call'd energies from out his vasty mind, 
Where'er they muse, delighted myriads find ; 
And though the sadness of his spirit threw 

Round earth's rare sunshine too severe a hue, 

f2 



52 OXFORD. i 

How Life and Character before him stand, 
Their mystVies open, and their scenes expand ! 
And well for wisdom, could the loud pretence 
Of puny language with profoundest sense, 
Such massy substance in the meaning show, 
As that which ages to a Johnson owe ! 

Descend from learning to the nearer view, 
Where Man appears in mortal colours true ; 
And where was piety more deeply shrin'd, 
Than in the temple of his awful mind, 
Whence day and night eternal incense rose 
To Him from whom the tide of being flows ! 
That self-respect, around whose constant sway 



part i. OXFORD. 53 

The purest beams of happiness must play, 
He ever felt ; the same proud dream it gave 
To hours that wither'd in the toils of Cave, 
And him, in aidless fortune high and free, 
Who taught a lord how mean a lord could be*! 
And, mix'd with harshness irritably loud, 
That came like thunder from the social cloud 
Which pride or pertness round the moment threw ; — 
His faith, how firm ! his tenderness, how true ! 
For Goldsmith's worth, or Garrick's lighter grace, 
The tear of fondness trembled down his face : 
And when did Want or Woe to him appeal, 
Nor find a hand to give, a heart to feel ? 

* Lord Chesterfield. 

F3 



54 OXFORD. PA* 

While Truth he worshipp , d with severest awe, 
To fame a glory, and to life a law °. 

So great he liv'd ; yet round the greatest soul 

How weakness hovers with a vile control ! — 

A grinning demon, whose contrasted sway 

Supremer wisdom cannot scorn away. 

As when some organ of the frame appears 

In matchless strength beyond the mould of years, 

A weakness balancing that strength is found ; 

So, oft in mind, where miracles abound, 

The lying pettiness of nature seems 

Revengfd in mocking what perfection dreams. 

In Johnson thus : the piety that trod 



parti. OXFORD. 55 

Each path of life, communing with her God 

In gloomy hours could childish phantoms see, 

And give to penance what was due to tea p ! 

The mind that reason'd on the fate of man, 

And soared as high as wingless Nature can, 

Would oft descend, the petty bigot show, 

And wrench his spirit to out-talk a foe ! 

Or else, in whirlwind fury swept along, 

Desert the right, to prove a victor wrong. 

The soul that spake angelically wise 

When Truth and he were thron'd amid the skies, 

In human life his Rasselas forgot, 

To wear the meanness of our common lot, 

By passion bow'd, each prejudice obey'd, 



56 OXFORD. parti. 

And grew ferocious when a smile was made ! 

Yet peace to such ! of all by men ador'd, 

Than Johnson, who could better, faults afford ? — 

Let Earth exult that such a man hath been, 

And England worship where his steps are seen ! 

To swell the records of collegiate fame, 

See Lincoln rise, and claim a Davenant's name q ; 

Within her walls the minstrel student wove 

Poetic dreams of melody and love. 

On him, as yet a verse-enchanted child, 

The Soul of nature, Shakespeare's self, had smil'd— 

Oh ! to have listenM to that glorious tongue, 

And seen the man on whom a World has hung, 



parti. OXFORD. 57 

Till admiration, so intensely wrought, 

Became a worship, and ador'd in thought ! — 

And, Wesley r ! often in thy room I see 

A holy shadow that resembles thee ; 

Let others laugh at that o'erheated mind, 

Which never gloried but to bless mankind, 

Be ours the tribute to as pure a Soul 

As Earth hath witness'd for sublime control. 

A kindred line to pious Hervey s pay, 

Whom Lincoln boasted in his morning day : 

When night begins, and starry wonders teem, 

My fancy paints him in some holy dream, 

With eye upturn'd to where th 1 Almighty shone, 

While vision'd angels warbled round His throne ! — 



58 OXFORD. part i. 

From Christ Church, lo! a dazzling host appears, 

Whom fame has hallow'd, and the world reveres, 

Of prelates, orators, and statesmen high, 

To be forgotten, when the world shall die ! — 

Here Sydney dreamt, Marcellus of his land, 

Whom poets Wd, and Queens acknowledg'd grand ; 

Of princely nature, open, brave, and free, 

In genius, — all that man was made to be ; 

A knightly age his noble wit beguiPd, 

1 And Courts were brighten^ when a Sydney smil'd ! 

And here the muse of tragedy divine 

Bade u Jonson rise, and picture Catiline ;— 

Immortal Ben ! to Selden dear, and fraught 

With all that Homer lov'd, or Plato taught. 



parti. OXFORD. 59 

A later age, and Locke's eternal mind 

Here soar'd to reason, such as Heav'n design'd, 

Help'd Understanding to redeem her sway, 

And out of midnight woke transcendent day x ! 

One ev'ning, when delightful converse glow'd, 
As friend on friend his gleam of thought bestow'd, 
A spark was struck that set his brain on fire v 9 
Whence sprang the work fond ages shall admire ! 
Hours worthy Heav'n ! when cultur'd spirits meet 
Within the chamber of divine retreat ; 
There friendship lives, there mental fondness reigns, 
And hearts, oblivious of their lonely pains, 
By feeling blended, one communion make, 



60 OXFORD. part 

To keep the brightness of the soul awake ! 

But who can languish through a hideous hour 
When heart is dead, and only wine hath powV ? 
That brainless meeting of congenial fools, 
Whose highest wisdom is to hate the Schools, 
Discuss a Tandem, or describe a race, 
And damn the Proctor with a solemn face, 
Swear nonsense wit, and intellect a sin, 
Loll o'er the wine, and asininely grin ! — 
Hard is the doom when awkward chance decoys 
A moment's homage to their brutal joys. 
What fogs of dulness fill the heated room, 
Bedimm'd with smoke, and poison'd with perfume, 



part i. OXFORD. 61 

Where now and then some rattling tongue awakes 
In oaths of thunder, till the chamber shakes ! 
Then Midnight comes, intoxicating maid ! 
What heroes snore, beneath the table laid ! 
But, still reserv'd to upright posture true, 
Behold ! how stately are the sterling few : — 
Soon o'er their sodden nature wine prevails, 
Decanters triumph, and the drunkard fails ; 
As weary tapers at some wondrous rout, 
Their strength departed, winkingly go out, 
Each spirit flickers till its light is o'er, 
And all is darkness that was drunk before ! — 



Oh ! thou, whose eloquence and wit combin'd 

G 



62 OXFORD. pa] 

To make their throne the heart of all mankind ; 
Whom Mem'ry visions in his wonted place 
Where passions lighten'd o'er a speaking face, 
And sounds of feeling from the soul were heard, 
While music hung on evVy magic word, — 
Regretted Canning ! oft has Christ Church seen 
Thine eye of glory sparkle round her scene : 
z From Eton fam'd, where noble merit shone 
In each young theme thy genius glanc'd upon, 
Her walls receiv'd thee ; where thy talents grew, 
Bright in the welcome of her fost'ring view, 
Till glowing Senates markM thy spirit rise, 
And England hail'd it with adoring eyes ! — 
Alas ! that in thy fame's triumphant bloom, 



parti. OXFORD. 63 

The shades of death hung grimly o'er thy doom, 

A frame too weak a fiery spirit wore, 

And Mind prevail'd till life's last pulse was o'er ! 

Thy funeral knell, — oh ! when I heard it moan, 
Like the grand echo of a nation's groan, 
Beheld the sky, where Sorrow loves to gaze 
When myst'ry wraps us, or the world betrays, 
And thought how soon thy glorious sun had set ! 
I felt a sadness that doth linger yet : 
But had I, demon -like, e'er wing'd the dart 
Whose poison fed upon thy feeling heart, 
Inflicted pangs where only praise was due, 

And vilely thwarted ev'ry nobler view ; 

g2 



64 OXFORD. parti. 

A more than melanch'jy for him who died, 

Slain by the weapons which renown supply'd. 

My soul had borne ; and, wrung with inward shame, 

Curs'd the dark hour that wounded Canning's fame! — 

Thy yew-treed walk, and wilderness of shade, 
Where rosily the twilight hues have play'd, 
By a Denham haunted, Trinity ! revere; 
There wander'd he, no step invasive near, 
The world forgot, to frame a poet's skill, 

And dream'd the melodies of Cooper's Hill. 

And haughty b Chatham, at whose humbling word 

E'en Walpole trembled, when its pow'r was heard ; 

Who baffled Spain, America, and Gaul, 



part r. OXFORD. 65 

To throne his England like a queen o'er all ! 
Thy paths have echo'd to his hallow'd feet, 
Thy shades enjoy'd him in sublime retreat. — 
Here c Warton , s soul emparadis'd his hours, 
And strew'd antiquity with classic flWrs * ; 
Where'er he went saw dim cathedrals rise, 
Or Gothic windows in their sunset dyes. 

And thou, whose ever-gentle page is fraught 
With tender deepness of delightful thought, 
Not unremember'd let thy name be found, 
d Where Genius hallows an enchanted ground. — 
Upon that brow the seal of time hath set 

* Nor rude, nor barren, are the winding ways 

Of hoar antiquity, but strewn with flowers. Warton. 

g3 



66 OXFORD. par' 

A mournful grace, but left no dark regret 
For wither'd years, whose flow'ry bloom remains 
In the pure freshness of Aonian strains. 
Yet oft will memVy in creative gloom 
Muse fondly sad o'er many a distant tomb, 
Where moulder forms that brightenM other days, 
Whose eyes have glisten'd o'er thy youthful lays !- 
Thy noontide spent, serener twilight glows 
Around thy spirit, like a soft repose, 
And oft I turn, when fancy wanders free, 
Romantic Bowles ! to bless a thought with thee : 
Oh ! long in Bremhill may the village chime 
Sound the sweet music of departing time, 
And fairy echoes as they float along, 



part i, OXFORD. 67 

Awaken visions that were born in song, 

Of hope and fame, when first impassion'd youth 

Their beauty painted on a world of truth e . 

Thy pleasing life, in past'ral quiet spent 

Where heav'n and earth comminglingly are blent, 

A pray'r evokes, that England long may see 

In wood-hung vales from city murmur free, 

Her landscape charm in varied shadow drest — 

The village steeple with its tow'ry crest, 

When dimly taperM to romantic height 

Or grayly melted into morning light. 

Not Windsor vast with battlemented towVs, 

With charm so deep a pensive gaze o'erpow'rs, 



68 OXFORD. pae 

As village spires, in native valleys seen, 

And nature all around them hush'd and green : 

How oft some eye, as o'er the wheel-traced road 

The whirling coach conducts her motley load, 

Hath wistful gazM where neat the pars'nage rose, 

The Church behind it, in rever'd repose. — 

Ah ! little know they, when the harsh declaim, 

Or Folly leads to scorn a Curate's name, 

In hamlets lone what lofty minds abound, 

To spread the smiles of charity around ! — 

It was not that a frowning chance deny'd 

An early wreath of honourable pride : 

In College rolls triumphantly they shine, 

And proudly Alma Mater calls them, mine ! 



parti. OXFORD. 69 

But heavenlier dreams than ever fame inspir'd 
Their spirit haunted, as the world retir'd ; 
The fameless quiet of parochial care. 
And silvan home, their fancy stoop'd to share ; 
And when arriv'd, no deeper bliss they sought 
Than that which undenying Heav'n had brought. — 
On such, perchance, renown may never beam, 
Though oft it glitter'd in some College dream ; 
But theirs the fame no worldly scenes supply, 
Who teach us how to live, and how to die ! 

In life so calm, unworldly, and refiVd, 
What pictur'd loveliness allures the mind ! 
Hast thou forgot that balmy summer noon 



70 OXFORD. part 

That glow'd so fair, and fled, alas ! so soon, 

My chosen friend ! in whose fond smile I see 

A spirit noble, and a nature free. 

When Blenheim woo'd us to her grand domain, 

Where HistYy smiles, and MarlbTough lives again 

And on the way how sweet retirement threw 

A shade of promise o'er life's distant view : — 

How wildly beautiful the vasty sky, 

Like heav'n reveal'd, burst radiant on the eye ! 

A spirit bosom'd in the winds, appear' d 

To chant noon-hymns, where'er a sound career'd, 

While ev'ry leaf a living gladness wore, 

And bird-like flutter'd as the breeze pass'd o'er ; 

The lark made music in the golden air, 



parti. OXFORD. 71 

The green earth, yellow 1 d by a sunny glare, 

In twinkling dyes beheld her flow'ry race 

Dance to the wind, and sparkle o'er her face ; 

Faint, sweet, and far, we heard the sheep-bell sound, 

And insect happiness prevail around. — 

The green monotony of hill and glade, 

Where viewless streams, by verdure oft betray'd, — 

Like Charity, who w r alks the world unseen, 

Yet leaves a light where'er her hand hath been, — 

By bank and mead roll'd windingly away, 

'Twas ours to witness in superb array ; 

And through that gate, in arched grandeur rear'd, 

When first the pomp of Blenheim Park appear'd, 

My fancy caught from thine assenting gaze 



72 OXFORD. p 

The magic gleam that sympathy betrays ! 

Noon glided on, till day's declining glow 
Beheld us sweeping o'er the verdant flow 
Of meadowy vales, to where the village hill 
In garden bloom we welcom'd, bright and still. 
That sunny eve in smiling converse fled 
Around a banquet generously spread, 
Beneath a roof where elegance combin'd 
The pure in taste with fancy the renVd,— 
The f church antique, whose ivied turret won 
The dying changes of departing sun, 
And gleam'd upon us at our parting hour, 
I still remember in its beauteous pow'r. 



parti. OXFORD. 

Then home we sped beside romantic trees 
Whose leaf-pomp glitter'd to the starting breeze, 
And fondly view'd in symmetry of shade 
The mimic branches on the meadows laid. 
In wave-like glory burn'd the sunset sky ! 
Where rosy billows seem'd to swell and lie, 
Superbly vast ; — as if that haughty Day, 
Ere yet th"* horizon saw him sink away, 
His clouds and colours vassal-like would see 
Once more awake, and own their Deity ! 

Where Balliol frowns along her ancient road, 
By g Evelyn hallow'd, his endear'd abode, — 
I never pass, nor think of them who died — 

H 



74 OXFORD. part i. 

Heroic martyrs, burning side by side ! 
Upon her walls there hung a crimson glare, 
And red fires raven'd on the breezeless air, 
But thou, false bigot * ! in that murd'rous hour 
Couldst look to Heav'n, and on thy victims lour, 
Then feed thy gaze with agonies of fire, 
As, limb by limb, the tortur'd saints expire ! — 
In serpent writhings, lo ! the flames awake, 
Hiss as they whirl, and riot round the stake, 
While mitred fiends, as they behold them rise, 
Gleam on the martyrs with their wolfish eyes ! 
Yet firm they stand : — behold ! what glories smile 
Above the fury of that savage pile ; 
* Doctor Smith, the apostate who recanted in King Edward's time. 



part i. OXFORD. 75 

Ten thousand harps, ten thousand anthems swell h , 
And Heav'n is worshipp'd in a scene of hell ! 

Here • Southey, in the radiant morn of youth, 

His feeling, conduct, and his fancy, truth, 

Beheld the orb of Liberty arise 

To gild the earth with glory from the skies ; 

What wonder then, if his Chaldean gaze 

With glowing worship met her morning rays, 

Beheld them bright as freedom's rays should be, 

And thought they darted from a Deity ? 

Who did not feel, when first her shackles fell, 

The truth sublime that France inspir'd so well ? — 

There is a freedom in the soul of man, 
h % 



76 OXFORD. part 

No tyrant quenches, and no torture can ! 

But when each Virtue from her throne was hurl'd, 

And Gaul became the dungeon of the world, 

No mean deserter was the patriot prov'd, 

Whose manhood censurM what his youth had lov'd. 

In bloom of life he sought domestic shade, 
Devoting hours a world had not betray 'd, 
In deep affection to delightful lore, 
Which virtue loves, and wisdom may adore. 
While others lingerd in the restless town 
To wear the thorny wreath of young renown ; 
Or, spirit-worn, see rivals mount above, 
With few to honour, and with none to love ; 



part i. OXFORD. 77 

Afar to Keswick's mountain calm he hied, 

And found the haven which a home supplied. 

There, nature pure to his pure soul appeals, 

With her he wanders, and with her he feels, 

While earth and sky for poesy unite, 

And hills of glory swell the heart's delight ! 

Thus flowingly the fairy hours depart, 

And each day adds a virtue to the heart. 

Ah, blissful lot ! which few have liv'd to share, 

Who haunt the world, and seek to find it there ; 

Forgetful that one day of life is fraught 

With years of meaning for inductive thought, 

In baffled hope, the mind exhales away, 

Their each to-morrow, a renew' d to-day ! 
h3 



78 OXFORD. pa 

Too fiercely kindled by some loud applause, 
They burn for glory, but betray her cause. — 
True fame is feeling, in its earthless hour 
Sent from the soul with world-subduing powV, 
From heart to heart electrically known, 
Till realms admire, and ages are its own ! 
Oh ! blest resolve, that consecrates a life, 
To leave for studious calm the noisome strife 
Of London's everlasting round of self, 
Pursue! by learning, or career'd for pelf. 
In wise seclusion heav'nward thoughts incline 
To form in man the elements divine ; 
From day to day their semblance nearer grows, 
Till kindred mind a kindred maker knows ; 



parti. OXFORD. 79 

And then, what beautiful accordance seen 

In all that truth has taught, or time hath been ! 

What once was dark becomes divinely clear, 

And earth itself a heav'n-reflecting sphere. 

The living principle of Pow'r above 

That issu'd forth in this fair world of love, 

The Spirit feels within herself abide, 

The will direct, and o'er each thought preside : 

In man or nature, whatsoe'er befall, 

Her faith can fathom, and interpret all ! 

Turn from the calm secluded life bestows, 

A life which Evelyn lov'd, and Southey knows, — 

To London ; where a world of living mind 



80 OXFORD. i 

In one dark fever of excess we find ; 
Where talent sparkles with incessant rays. 
And authors perish for the want of praise ! — 
Though minds there be, whose magical control, 
Like sounds from heav'n, beatifies the soul, . 
Too rapidly our soaring authors teem, 
For each to fill the circle of his dream. 
Though high the hope which energy awakes, 
And far the flight a free-wing'd spirit takes, 
A thousand hearts o'er disappointment bleed,— 
The many venture, but the few succeed. 
Hence of all crimes, the last to be forgiv'n, 
Eternal barrier to some critic's heav'n, 
Success is prov'd ; — that hour her star appears 



parti. OXFORD. 81 

In daring brightness to outdazzle years, 

The fogs of hate, the clouds of dulness rise, 

To quench her glory, and deface her skies. 

Hence martial pens in pugilistic rage, 

And venom oozing from each vulgar page, 

Slander abroad on her exulting wings 

To frighten fools, or flap the face of kings, 

While faded authors, overcome with bile, 

Turn into villains, and lampoon the isle * ! 

But, hark ! to sounds so musically dear, 
By flattYy melted into folly's ear ; 



* II n'y a point au monde un si p^nible metier que celui de se faire 
un grand nom. Bruyere. 



82 OXFORD. m 

Behold a Lion that doth roar to-night, 
And doubt if homage be not man's delight ! 
Amid the sweet soft words that come and go 
From lord to lady, and from belle to beaux, 
There in thyself a night-thron'd idol see, 
'Tis all thou art, and all a fool should be * !— 
Enamour'd thus, nonsensically dream 
Thy mental worth a supernatral theme ; 
Yet, look around thee ere the night be o'er, 
Thy heart is free, and thou a fool no more ! 
Thy mien, thy manners, and thy person tend 
To make no charm Politeness could commend ; 
And, lest they should not quite sufficient see, 
* 'Tis all thou art, and all the proud shall be ! Pope. 



parti. OXFORD. 

The faults of others are bestow'd on thee : 
Thus on, till all that once was glory thought 
From tongue to tongue is whisper'd into nought ; 
While each is conscious, as thy fame's o'erthrown, 
Tp wound another's, is to heal his own. 

Yet oft ambiguous Hate her truth beguiles, 
And Envy wriggles into serpent smiles ! — 
Some cringing, cawing, sycophantic sneak, 
With heart as hollow as his head is weak, 
In smother'd voice will chance a rival sue 
To feed the pages of a starv'd review ; 
" Dear Sir ! I think your genius quite divine," — 
To morrow, turn, and lash it line by line ! 



84 OXFORD. par: 

And can it be, to such ignoble life 
Of ceaseless longing and chicaning strife, 
Where fever'd passion frets the hour along, 
That Woman's gentler soul would fain belong ? — 
Oh! deem not the assuming pride of man 
Would claim a glory which no woman can, 
Nor think to her soft nature is not giv'n 
The flame of genius, with the form of heav'n ! 
Her tenderness hath made our harshness weep, 
And huslVd our passions into child-like sleep ; 
Her dewy words fall freshly on the Soul, 
Her numbers sweet as seraph music roll ; 
And beautiful the morn-like burst of mind, 
When first her spirit wakens o'er mankind ! 



parti. OXFORD. 85 

Now painting clouds, now imaging the sea, 

Bloom on the flow'r, and verdure on the tree ! 

But different far a genius thus display'd, 

From mind corrupted into menial trade, 

When reputation is the theme ador'd, 

And pilfer'd learning all its charms afford. 

Those hues divine that delicately please, 

The smile unfashion'd, and the soul at ease, — 

All, all that language is too frail to tell, 

Which forms in woman what we feel so well, — 

In public life too often dies away, 

Like dreams forgotten in the flush of day. 

There, taunting pens dissect her dubiousclai m, 

Or jeering coxcombs jest away her fame ; 



86 OXFORD. pa 

The pure unknown again she cannot be, 
No heart is shelter'd, and no home is free ! 
Behold the beauty of yon garden flow'r 
In lovely bloom beside its native bow'r ; 
What winning freshness in each healthful dye ! 
Pure as the spring, and radiant as the sky ; 
Transplant it thence to some o'erheated room, 
Where hands profane it, — and, alas ! the bloom ! 

Let man his intellectual sceptre wield ; 
To him have Ages in their march appeaFd, 
To shape the elements of mind and pow'r 
Through the vast scene of Life's unrestful hour. 
But thou, fond woman ! on affection's throne, 



part i. OXFORD. 87 

Behold a kingdom of the heart thine own ! 

There feelings form the subjects of thy sway, 

And all is Eden where thy glances play ! 

'Tis thine to brighten, far from public strife, 

The daily windings of domestic life, 

The thousand hues that sprinkle ev'ry scene, 

Where Time betrayeth that his touch hath been. — 

A magic deeper than Creation pours 

Full on the spirit from unfathom'd stores, 

An ecstasy beyond each art divine, 

The painter's vision, or the poet's line, 

'Tis thine to kindle, when the soul is free 

To form an idol, and confess it thee k ! — 



88 OXFORD. part 

This venturing page I know not who may view ; 

Some heart may feel it, and pronounce it true, 

Welcome the thoughts that once its own have been, 

Untomb the past, and re-awake her scene : 

Or, on each line a freezing glance may fall, 

Deny the meaning, or denounce it all. 

But should there be some youth by passion wrung 

In whose wild ear Ambition's voice hath sung, 

Making the blood turn feeling as it flows, 

Till Nature like unbodied Spirit glows !— 

For such, a passing hue from life I steal, 

To paint in verse what one was doom'd to feel ; 

No matter though oblivion shroud a name, — 

The moral acts, and truth survives the same. 



parti. OXFORD. 

In orphan loneliness his Childhood pass'd, 

And each year left him lonely as the last, 

Till sadness, born of such unwonted state, 

Became at length the shadow of his fate, 

That never left him in his brightest hour ; — 

Unseen by others, he could mark it lour, — 

Eternal winter to his heart and brain, 

For musing sorrow, or ennobling pain. 

But Nature reignM imperiously divine, 

And his heart throbb'd, thou Universe ! with thine 

No cloud meander'd o'er the sea-like heav'n, 

No wave upon his ocean march was driv'n, 

No scene was glorious, and no object grand, — 

But there he worshipp'd an Almighty Hand ; 
i3 



90 OXFORD. pa 

And walk'd the earth as where some angel trod, 
And dream'd in silence, till it spake of God ! 
Thus grew his heart, till poesy began 
When boyhood hover'd on the verge of man ; 
Unprison'd feelings which bad filFd his breast 
With fiery hopes, that never cool'd to rest, 
And sent them forth on solitary claim 
To face the peril of an early fame. — 

Pleasant is Morning, when her radiant eye 
Opes on the world, enchanting all the sky ; 
And Ev'ning, with her balmy glow of light, 
The beauteous herald of romantic night ; 
And pleasant oft to some poetic mind 



parti. OXFORD. 91 

The sound of water, and the sweep of wind, 

A friend renew'd in some heart-welcom'd place, 

With years of fondness rising in his face ; 

The tear that answers to a tale of woe, 

And happy feelings in their heav'nward flow. 

But sweeter far proves his revengeful lot 

Whom Fame hath slighted, or the World forgot, 

In printed bile to let his spirit vent, 

And mangle volumes to his heart's content ; 

Corrupt what style, create what fault he please, 

Laugh o'er the truth, and lie with graceful ease ! 

Thus envy lives, and disappointment heals 

The gangren'd wounds a tortur'd mem'ry feels ; 

Thus wither'd hopes delightful vengeance wreak, 



92 OXFORD. paeti. 

And pages thunder more than scorn could speak ! 

And thus with thee, whose life I now recall ; 

Malignant trash, — 'twas thine to scorn it all ! 

Each reptile started from his snug review 

To spit out poison, — as most reptiles do ; 

Oh ! how they feasted on each faulty line, 

And generously made their dulness thine ! 

From page to page they grinn'd a ghastly smile, 

Yet seem'd to look so heav'nlike all the while ; 

Then talk'd of merit to the world unknown, — 

Ah ! who could doubt them, for they meant their own 1 . 

Religion too ! — what right had he to scan 



part i. OXFORD. 93 

The scheme of glory which she wove for man ; 

Or paint around him, wheresoe , er he trod, 

The glowing fulness of eternal God ? 

Indeed "'twas hinted, — hop'd it was untrue, 

His heart had worn an atheistic hue ; 

And still religion, though its hallow'd name 

Had lent a freshness to his early fame, 

Had not alike both heart and head inspir'd ; 

In short, the world was sick, and they were tir'd ; 

And then, to prove his verse had made it vile, 

They mouth'd it in their own sweet monthly style ! 

Next, Paternoster* hir'd a serpent too, 
*Subaud. Row. 



94 OXFORD. parti. 

To sound his rattle in the Scotch review m ; 

And yet, — alas ! that such a menial end 

Should wait on all who noble taste defend, 

Though much was thought, and more, divinely said, 

The poet triumph''d, and the public read ; 

And when Abuse herself had ceas'd to pay, 

That public hooted, and she slunk away ! — 

The faded past my fancy haunts again ; 

And lo ! thine image shadow 1 d o'er my strain, 

Thou lovely Spirit of divinest worth ! 

Whose saint-like pureness so adora'd the earth, 

And, when it vanishM, thrill'd a world with woe, 

And thoughts, that never into language flow ; 



part i. OXFORD. 95 

But silently within the soul retire, 
And all the majesty of grief inspire ! 

Yet, words and tears have minglingly ador'd, 
Deep, warm, and true, as feeling hearts afford, — 
Those angel attributes that good men prize, 
Lamented Heber ! when they leave the skies, 
Awhile some spirit pure as thine array, 
Smile on the world, and heav'Wike pass away ! 

There is a shadow round the holy dead ; 

A mystery, wherein we seem to tread ; 

As oft their lineaments of life awake, 

And sorrowing thoughts their hallo w'd semblance take. 



96 OXFORD. part 

What once they dreamt, when mortal nature threw 
Phantasmal dimness round their soaring view, 
Now, all unearth'd, beatified, and free 
From toil and tears, — -the unscal'd eye can see : 
No more on them, the fitful whirl of things 
From joy to gloom, eternal trial brings ; 
Array'd in light, before the Throne they shine, 
And fathom mysteries of Love Divine ; 
Why tears were shed, why pangs of woe prevaiFd, 
Why Goodness mourn'd, and Virtue often fail'd, — 
No longer now a with'ring shadow throws, 
Like that which hovers round the world's repose. 

The holy dead ! of Earth and Heav'n the dear .' 



parti. OXFORD. 97 

Whene'er the darkness of our troubled sphere 

'Twixt God and man will demon-like arise, 

Deject the soul, and doubt away the skies, 

Then Mem'ry points to where their feet have trod, 

Redeems our nature, and recalls her God ! — 

Creation's debt to discontented Time 

They help'd to cancel, by excess sublime 

Of worth and wisdom, magically great 

Above the meanness of our mortal state : 

The smile that withers in its cynic play 

Each hope of Earth when budding into day, 

By merit aw'd, in forceless meaning falls, 

Whenever mind exalted mind recalls ; 

And eras bright of holiness and love 

K 



98 OXFORD. 

Their spirits promise from a world above ! 

And such was he, whose toiling virtues won 
A tomb of fame beneath a foreign sun. 
In childhood, ev'ry dawning sweetness made 
A tender magic which no truth betray 'd ; 
While, fond as feeble, blendingly began 
Those mental traits that ripen into man. 
Romance and fairies, red Crusades inspir'd 
The poesy which deeper years admir'd : 
HeavVs awful book for ever would he read, 
And mourn to see the great Redeemer bleed ; 
In all he did, benevolence prevail'd, 
And when entreated, — never kindness fail 1 d ; 



parti. OXFORD. 

Nor form of woe, nor face of grief he pass'd, 

But pitied all, and pitied to his last n ! 

From Neasden fresh, lo ! Oxford hails him no\v°, 

And fancies new are bright'ning o'er his brow : 

Too warmly ton'd, too feelingly endow'd, 

Companionless to linger in the crowd, 

A brother's fame around him lives and blooms, 

His mind awakes, — and magic fills his rooms ! 

Where souls have listen'd as he charm'd the hour, 

And young eyes sparkled to confess his powV. 

Still, unentangled by the social net, 

Though smile and banquet of the heart beset, 

Each Dawn beheld him at his classic tome, 
k 2 



100 OXFORD. par 

And pure, as in his unforgotten home P ! 

Scarce enter'd yet, and honours flower'd his way ! 
And soon the music of his master lay 
From circling thousands woke a thrill divined, 
While England wept o'er weeping Palestine ! — 
There are, that still in this cold world remain, 
Whose ears are haunted by that holy strain, 
Whose eyes dejected Salem still behold, 
As scene on scene the vision was unrolPd, 
When invocation with her sweetest sound 
Woo'd angel forms, and angels watchM around ! 
While grandly swelling into giant view, 
" Like some tall palm the noiseless fabric grew !" 



part i. OXFORD. 101 

Then Israel harping by her willow'd streams, 

And prophets bright with more than prophet dreams, 

The poet vision'd in his pictur'd strain 

Amid the glory of Millennium's reign : 

Then bade his thunders tell of time no more, 

Till Nature shudder'd at their dooming roar ! 

Fond eyes were fiVd upon the minstrel now, 

A raptur'd Sire beheld his laurell'd brow, 

And blest his boy with all that tears bestow, 

When heav'n seems by, and human hearts o'erflow ! 

And where was he ? — escap'd the glowing throng 

In the proud moment of triumphant song, 

He sought his chamber ; — silent and alone, 
k3 



102 OXFORD. part 

A mother saw him at his Maker's throne r ! 

That hour hath past : — a village curate made, 
How nobly seen amid retirement's shade ! 
Parochial cares his cultur'd mind employ, 
Domestic life, and intellectual joy. 
The old men cry, — a blessing on his head ! 
And angels meet him at the dying bed ; 
Let fever rage, disease or famine roll 
Tormenting clouds that madden o'er the soul, 
Where life exists, there Heber's love is found, 
And heav'n created by its welcome sound ! 

None are all blest ; without some mental strife 



parti. OXFORD. 103 

To ripple, not destroy, the calm of life : 

That heart for ever open to the poor, 

Who weeping came, but smiling left his door, 

Was all unapt when mean annoyments rose 

From rustic fools, or mercenary foes, 

By happy lightness to o'erleap them all, 

And melt the clouds which daily life befall. 

For wiser oft, where common nature guides, 

Th' ungifted spirit of the world presides, 

Than he, whose loftiness of feeling fails 

To stoop or wind where subtlety prevails. — 

Nor could that soul, though high its lot had been, 

Forget to paint a more expanded scene, 

An atmosphere wherein the mind could sway 



104 OXFORD. part i. 

O'er wider realms of intellectual day. — 

They dawn'd at length ! — a not unclouded dream, 

From golden climes by Ganga's idol stream. 

That Indian soil poetic fancy knew, 

Her sculptur'd wreck, and mountain's roseate view, 

Her palmy mead by banks of radiant green, 

And dusky cots where cooling plantains lean. — 

But when he felt a meek-ey'd mother's gaze, 

And thought how soon might end her lonely days ! 

Beheld his child in cradled hush asleep, 

Too frail to dare the thunders of the deep ; 

His books deserted, friendship's riven chain, 

And he, — afar upon the boundless main ! 

That strife of soul might well forbid him roam, 



part i. OXFORD. 105 

And softly hue the tenderness of home ! 

Those shading doubts a Providence dispell'd ; 
Each home-born fear aspiring goodness quell'd : 
The parting o'er, behold ! the billows sweep 
In rushing music as he rides the deep, 
That wafts him onward to his Indian clime, 
While mus'd his heart on future toil sublime, 
Whereby Redemption and her God would smile 
On heathen lands, and many a lonely islej 
Where stinted Nature in her soulless gloom 
From age to age had wither'd to the tomb ! — 
And haply too, when rose the twilight star, 
And billows flutter'd in a breezy war, 



106 OXFORD. parti. 

At that dim hour regretted England came, 
Familiar walks and sounds of early fame, 
And village steeple, with the lowly race 
Whose fondness brighten'd to behold his face ! 

The Land was reacted ; and, oh ! too fondly known 
How Heber made that sunny land his own, 
Till heathen hearts a Christian nature wore, 
And feelings sprang which never bloom'd before, 
As toiPd he there with apostolic truth, 
Redeem^ her Aged, and reform'd her Youth, 
For praise to honour with a pow'rless line 
A heart so deep, a spirit so divine s ! 



part i. OXFORD. 107 

He liv'd ; he died ; in life and death the same, 

A Christian martyr, — whose majestic fame 

In beacon glory o'er the world shall blaze, 

And lighten empires with celestial rays ! 

While Virtue throbs, or human hearts admire 

A poet's feeling with a prophet's fire ; 

While pure Religion hath a shrine to own, 

Or Man can worship at his Maker's throne ! 

END OF PART I. 



OXFORD 



PART II. 



The still air of delightful studies. 

Milton. 



-to range 



Where silver Isis leads the stripling feet ; 

Pace the long avenue, or glide adown 

The stream-like windings of that glorious street ! 

Wordsworth. 



ANALYSIS OF PART II. 

The proud feelings arising from a survey of the past- 
commencement of College life — entrance into Oxford — 
first morning in the University — chapel service — a walk 
through the town — the New Clarendon — circulation of the 
Scriptures — sublime hopes — picture of the Indian reading 
his Bible — return to Oxford life — the freshman — ac- 
quaintances — characters — difficulty and danger of selec- 
tion — importance of the first step in College life — the 
pure associations of Home — advancement and triumph— 
the reprobate — Tutors — Fellowships — collegiate retire- 
ment considered in reference to happiness — reflections on 
the same — chime of evening bells — the student — fasci- 
nations of midnight study — mental and physical effects — 
Night-scene — moonlight — its splendours — reflective con- 
clusion — time — youth — retrospections and anticipations 
— thirst for fame and struggles for renown — the evanescent 
nature of human glory — a farewell view, and apostrophe 
to Heaven. 



l2 



PART II. 

AND thus o'er Alma Mater's matchless few- 
Hath Fancy wander'd in her fleet review ; 
And, oh my Country ! glorious, grand, and free, 
Soul of the world ! what spirits hallow thee ! — 
There is a magic in thy mighty name, 
A swell of glory, and a sound of fame ; 
And myriads feel upon thy hills and plains 
The patriot blood rush warmer to their veins, 
As all thou wert, and art, the mind surveys 

With burning wonder and enchanted gaze ! — 
l3 



114 OXFORD. parti] 

To this proud scene of architect'ral pride, 

To all but her, the ocean-fam'd, denied, — 

A parent sends with many a bosom'd fear 

His child, to arm him for the world's career. 

Nor deem unawful that remember'd hour 

When Fate and Fortune with seductive pow'r, 

To Inexperience urge their blended claim, 

And lead to honour, or allure to shame. — 

At length, young Novice ! comes that fond farewell 

Which words deny, but tears as truly tell ; 

The distance won, — behold ! at ev'ning hour 

Thine eye's first wonder fix'd on Maudlin tow'r, 

Then gothic glories, as they swell to view 

In steepled vastness, dark with ages' hue : 






part ii. OXFORD. 115 

And on thine ear when first the morn-bells wake, 
As o'er the wind their jangling echoes shake, 
Delighted fancy will illume thy brow, 
To feel thyself in ancient Oxford now ! 

Collegiate life next opens on thy way, 
Begins at morn, and mingles with the day ; 
The pilla^d cloister, in whose twilight gloom 
Dark dreams arise, like shadows from the tomb, 
Now hears thy step : and well at first, I ween, 
The stately Chapel with her sculptur'd screen, 
The windows dim, where Bible dramas live 
For ages, in the glow which colours give, — 
Till, when the sunbeams mellowingly pass 



116 OXFORD. pari 

Through vested figures on the tinted glass, 
Priest, saint, and prophet, all are glowing there, 
With kneeling martyrs at their dying pray'r ! — 
The graven fretwork on the gothic wall, 
And flow'ry roof that overarches all, — 
Unite for thee, with young amazement warm, 
In the full freshness of romantic charm. 

And now the walk of wonder through the town 
In the first flutter of a virgin gown ! 
From cap and robe, what awkward shyness steals, 
How wild a truth the dazzled Novice feels ! 
Restless the eye, his voice a nervous sound, 
While laughing echoes are evok'd around ; 



part ii. OXFORD. 117 

Each look he faces seems on him to leer, 
And fancied giggles are for ever near ! 
Through High Street then, — the town's majestic pride 
Array'd with palaces on either side, 
He roams : him tradesmen's greedy eyes behold, 
Each pocket gaping for a freshman's gold. 
The Clarendon may next a look beguile, 
Theatric dome, and Ashmolean pile ; 
Or Bodley's chambers *, where in dusky rows 
The volum'd wonders of the past repose ; 
Or some bold thought a wayward fancy rules, 
To take a freeze of horror from the Schools, 
From lofty benches send a downward gaze, 
* The Bodleian. 



118 OXFORD. parti] 

Hear awful sounds, and dream of future days ! 

Yet once again a scene of glory view, 
The second Clarendon, superbly new : 
Then pause, and think ; — for there, a sense sublime 
How proud a victor over Space and Time 
When Mind hath wielded her undaunted powV, 
Is man, the slave and monarch of an hour ! 
Comes o'er the spirit with unutter'd thought, 
Like melody with years of feeling fraught ! 
Yet not the miracles of England's Press, — 
That mighty Oracle to curse or bless ! — 
Alone the worship of high thought demand, 
Lo ! earth-wide dreams around the soul expand, 



part ii. OXFORD. 119 

As dwells thy gaze on yon enormous piles 

Of hallow'd books, for heathen lands, and isles ; 

A godlike present for benighted Man 

Where Truth hath wander'd, or where Mercy can ! 

Transcendent pow'r ! — ere changing years have flown, 
A Spirit speaks to ev'ry clime and zone I 
The hut, the hovel, or the cottage wild 
Where Sorrow shudders o'er her weeping child, 
A living voice of holiness and love, 
Like angel tones, shall visit from above. 
Omnipotence is there! — a pow'r to be 
The God on earth, salvation's deity. 
Thou Infidel ! in tomb-like darkness laid, 



120 OXFORD. part u 

By Heav'n deserted, and by earth betray'd ; 

And thou ! pale mutt'rer in some midnight cell, 

Whose sad to-morrow is a dream of hell ! 

There is a voice to wake, a word to spread, 

Deep as the thunders that arouse the dead ; 

That sound is heard ! — a welcome from the skies, — 

Despair is vanquish'd, and Dejection flies ; 

Hope fills a heart where agonies have been, 

The dungeon brightens, and a God is seen ! 

Immortal pages ! may your spirit pour 
Unceasing day, till savage night be o'er. — 
In fiery lands, where roving Ganga reigns, 
Eternal pilgrim of a thousand plains ! 



part ii. OXFORD. 121 

The tawny Indian, when the day is done, 
And blazing waters redden in the sun, 
While shadow'd branches in their boundless play 
Of leafy wantonness, the earth array, — 
Behold him seated, with his babes around, 
To fathom myst'ries where a God is found ! 
The book is op'd, a wondrous page began, 
Where heav'n is offer'd to forgiven man ; 
Lo ! as he reads, what awe-like wonder steals 
On all he fancies, and on all he feels ! 
Till o'er his mind, by mute devotion wrought, 
The gleaming twilight of celestial thought 
Begins, and heav'n-ey'd Faith beholds above 
A God of glory, and a Lord of love ! — 

M 



122 OXFORD. pakt ii. 

" Thou dread Unknown ! Thou unimagin'd Whole ! 
The vast Supreme, and Universal Soul, 
Oft in the whirlwind have I shap'd Thy form, 
Or, thron'd in thunder heard Thee sway the storm ! 
And when the ocean's heaving vastness grew 
Black with Thy curse, — my spirit darken'd too ! 
But when the world beneath a sun-gaze smiFd, 
And not a frown the sleeping air defiPd, 
Then I have lov'd Thee, Thou parental One, 
Thy wrath a tempest, and Thy smile a sun ! 
But if there be, as heav'n-breattfd words relate, 
A seraph-home in some hereafter state, 
Almighty Pow'r ! thy dark-soul'd Indian see, 
And grant the mercy that has bled for me !" 



part ii. OXFORD. 123 

And, oh ! if pray'r so Aveak as mine may blend 

With purer sighs that ceaselessly ascend, 

While now the wings of vengeance are unfurl'd, 

And clouds of woe come black'ning o'er the world ! 

May England shed on ev'ry zone and isle, 

The full reflection of her Saviour's smile ! — 

When all the glories of Creation fail, 

When thrones are shiver'd, and when kingdoms quail ; 

Yea, when that ocean which proclaim'd her grand, 

Rolls into nothing at the high command ! — 

Eternity shall chronicle the fame 

Of him who honour'd a Redeemer's name a ! — 



— O'er Oxford thus the staring freshman roves, 

m 2 



124 OXFORD. part 

By solemn temples, or secluded groves ; 
Then, introduc , d, — the social charms begin 
By tongues that flatter, or by hearts that win ; 
Mien, mind, and manner, — all in varied style 
Now woo his fortune, or reflect his smile. 
For here, as in the world's unbounded sphere 

The countless traits of character appear. — 
In some proud youth of feeling soul we find 

The winning magic of a noble mind ; 

Truth, taste, and sense through all he does pervade, 

No virtue lost, no principle betray'd ; 

Another, — wildness marks his mien and tone ! 

His hand extends — and honours are his own ; 

Eternal plaudits in his ear resound, 



part ii. OXFORD. 125 

He rides on wings, while others walk the ground ! 

A contrast see, whom arts nor dreams inspire, — 

The booby offspring of a booby sire, 

With leaden visage passionlessly cold, 

And ev'ry feeling round himself enroll'd. 

Then, happy Pertness, how sincerely vain ! 

And, sour Perfection, — what sublime disdain ! 

For ever in detractive art employ 'd, 

No virtue welcom'd, and no book enjoy \1 : 

Then, pompous Learning, deeply read and skilPd 

In pages which profoundest heads have fill'd, 

Yet harsh and tasteless, and but rarely fraught 

With knowledge sprung from self-created thought. 

But, save me, heav'n ! from what no words can tell, — 
m3 



126 OXFORD. pak 

A human Nothing, made of strut and swell, 
Who thinks no University contains 
Sufficient wisdom to reward his brains ; 
Yet, frothy Creature ! what a vacant skull ! 
In all but falsehood, villainously dull ; 
Big words and oaths in one wild volley roll, 
And Nature blushes for so mean a soul ! 

Begirt by these, how oft may heart-warm Youth 
Grow blindly fond, and misinterpret truth, 
When feelings in their flush'd dominion lend 
To fancied kindness what completes a friend ? 
Now dawns the moment, doom'd in future years 
To waken triumph, or be born in tears, 



part ii. OXFORD. 127 

When morals sway, religion lives or dies, 
And cited principles to action rise. — 
Oh ! thou o'er whom a mother's eye hath wept, 
Or round thy cradle frequent vigils kept ; 
Whose infant soul a father's love survey'd, 
And oft for thee with Heav'n communion made ; 
Be thine the circle where true Friendship lives 
In the pure light exalted spirit gives b ; 
And far from thee the infamous and vile, 
Who murder feeling with a stoic smile, 
Blaspheme the innocence of early days, 
Make virtue vice, impiety a praise, 
Disease the health of unpolluted mind, 
And call it glory to disgrace mankind ! 



128 OXFORD. pak 

What though the eye may sparkle o'er the glass, 
Or fondling words for fascination pass, 
While flow'rs of friendship oft appear to bloom, 

Born in the sunshine of a festive room, 

A day will come when sterner truths prevail, 
And friendship dwindles into folly's tale ! 

But should'st thou waver, when the awful hour 
Of pleasure tempteth with a demon's pow'r, 
And time and circumstance together seem 
To dazzle nature with too bright a dream, — 
Let home and virtue, what thou wert and art, 
A mother's feeling, and a father's heart, 
Full on thy mem'ry rise with blended charm, 



part ii. OXFORD. 129 

And all the serpent in thy soul disarm ! 
For who shall say, when first temptations win 
A yielding mind to some enchanted sin, 
What future crime, that once appear'd too black 
For life to wander o'er its hell-ward track, 
May lead the heart to some tremendous doom, 
Whose midnight hovers round an early tomb ? 
Let home be vision'd, where thy budding days 
Their beauty open'd on a parent's gaze. 
In these, what memories of thee abound ! — 
Thy chamber echoes with its wonted sound ; 
The flow'r you rear'd, a sister's nursing hand 
Still fondly guards, and helps each leaf expand ; 
The page you ponder'd with delighted brow 



130 OXFORD. part 

Was ever dear, — but oh ! far dearer now ; 
The walk you lov'd with her sweet smile to share, 
She oft repeats, and paints your image there ; 
And when a glory hath array' d the sky, 
Her fancy revels in your fav'rite die ; 
While oft at ev'ning, when domestic bloom 
Hath flung a freshness round a social room, 
When hearts unfold, and music's winged note 
Can waft a feeling wheresoe'er it float, 
Some chord is touch'd, whose melodies awake 
The pang of fondness for a brother's sake ; 
And eyes are conscious, as they gaze around 
Where looks are falling, there a son was found ! 
Let home begird thee like a guardian dream, 



part ii. OXFORD. 131 

And time will wander an unsullied stream, 
Whose wildest motion is the rippled play 
Of rapid moments as they roll away ! — 
Meanwhile, delightful studies, deep and strong, 
To graduate honours waft thy soul along ; 
They come at length ! and high in listed fame 
A college hails, a country reads thy name ; 
And in that list when first thy name appears, 
What triumph sparkles in those happy tears ! — 
In afterlife, when Oxford's ancient tow'rs 
Thy mem'ry shadows in thy museful hours, 
Or college friends a college scene restore, 
Thy heart will banquet on the bliss of yore ! 



132 OXFORD. part 

Now mark a contrast, in whose meanness lies 

What purer thought should soaringly despise. — 

From careless boyhood to uncultur'd man 

Indulg'd to act, ere principle began ; 

With just enough of spirit for excess, 

And heart which nothing, save a vice, can bless, — 

In Oxford, see the reprobate appear ! 

Big with the promise of a mad career. 

With cash and consequence to lead the way, 

A fool by night, and more than fop by day, — 

What happy vileness doth his lot reveal, 

How Folly burns with imitative zeal, 

Whene'er the shadows of his greatness fall 

In festive chamber, or collegiate hall ! 



part ii. OXFORD. 133 

Romantic lot ! — to vegetate secure 

From all that might to mental paths allure ; 

To wake each morning with no deeper thought, 

Than that which yesterday"^ excess hath brought ; 

Then, wing'd by impulse, as the day proceeds, 

To follow where coxcomic fashion leads, — 

Hark ! Woodstock rattles with eternal wheels, 

And hounds are ever barking at his heels, 

The Chapel, voted a terrific bore, 

The " Dons,"" — head -pieces for the college door ! 

The lecture scouted, the degree reviPd, 

And Alma Mater all save alma styPd ! — 

Thus on ; till night advance, whose reign divine 

Is chastely dedicate to cards and wine, 

N 



134 OXFORD. part 

Where modest themes amusive tongues excite, 
And faces redden with the soul's delight ; 
A Roman banquet ! with Athenian flow'rs 
Of festive wit, to charm the graceful hours ! — 

Alas ! that Truth must fling a doleful shade 
On the bright portrait which her hand hath made ! 
Few years have fled, — and what doth now remain 
Of him the haughty, who but smil'd disdain 
On all that Virtue in her meekness dar'd, 
Ambition hop'd, or principle declar'd ? 
His friends are dead ; his fortune sunk away 
In midnight Hells, where midnight demons play ; 
A wither'd skeleton of sin and shame, 



part ii. OXFORD. 135 

With nought but infamy to track his name, 
The wreck of fortune, with despairing sighs, 
Fades from the world, and like a felon dies ! 

A nobler theme ! ere yet my strain conclude, — 
The learn'd and gifted, dignified and good ; 
Those tasteful guides, by whose directing hand 
The seeds of learning ripen or expand : 
And if one task there be the soul to try, 
Whose with'ring toils a due reward defy, 
On them it falls whom Merit ranks her own, 
And Talent seats on Education's throne. — 
Each mode of mind, — the stubborn, wise, or stern, 

The headstrong wit that cannot stoop to learn, — 

n2 



136 OXFORD. part i 

The dunce or drone, the freshman or the fool, 

Tis their's to counsel, teach, o'erawe, and rule ! 

Their only meed, — some execrating word 

To blight the hour when first their voice was heard, 

Too often paid, when puny coxcombs dare 

To prove the nothingness of what they are ! 

Yet well may such a doom be nobly fac'd ; 
There comes a scene by no dark, cloud disgrac'd, — 
An hour when Genius, borne aloft to fame, 
On Oxford sheds the brightness of her name, 
Whence first her wings the eagle height explor'd, 
Where now she reigns, adoring and adord ! 
Then he who taught her, shares with proud surprise, 



part ii. OXFORD. 137 

And dewy gladness of delighted eyes, 

That hour triumphant, when a world repays 

The toilful dulness of collegiate days. — 

Ah ! who forgets the parents of the mind ? 

What heart so dead, as no deep bliss to find 

In thoughts which wander to their school-day scene, 

Though years and distance darkly intervene ? 

The foot-worn mead, the playmate, wood, and walk 

So sweetly shar'd in tenderness and talk, 

The feats and pranks of undejected youth, 

When fancy wore a fairy mask of truth, — 

Dull, drear, and worldly is the soul that sees 

No smile reflected from such joys as these ! 

n3 



138 OXFORD. PAitT ii. 

And they who haunt, from year to year content, 

The sacred home where studious hours were spent,— 

There are who think their stormless life must be 

One still romance of mental liberty. 

Yet mind alone, whate'er the lot or state. 

Her true delight must fancy or create ; 

From her the sunshine and the shadows fall, 

That brighten, tint, and oversway it all. — 

The daily clockwork of collegiate life, 

Where nought is new, but Convocation strife ; 

The bigotry which olden times beget, 

A sickly dulness, and a stale regret 

For aught that seems of reformation sprung, 

To let in light where ancient cobwebs hung, — 



part ii. OXFORD. 139 

If such combine, where weaker traits are found, 

Who would not mourn that fellowships abound ? — 

The mighty brothers of the Sun and Moon, 

Who tremble, lest a lip should smile too soon ; 

Nor treat their mouths except with college twang, 

Where heavy words in heavy speeches hang ; 

Who hate the present, but adore the past, 

And think their world the only one to last, — 

How pitiful ! should such a race be seen, 

Where all the monarchs of the mind have been ! — 

Retirement, classic love, and studious ease, 

A heart that deems it no disgrace to please, 

With retrospections fond of other days, 

When minds were nurs'djthat now repeat their praise— 



140 OXFORD. par 

A lot so calm no virtue will destroy, 

But season life for solitary joy. 

And yet, let shades of accident unite 

In happy union for its best delight, 

A life of learning is a life forlorn : — 

Be mine the world which social scenes adorn ; 

Where Woman's heart the central bliss is found, 

And happiness — the smile it sheds around c ! 

But Night is thron'd ; and full before me frown 
The dusky steeples that o'ertop the town ; 
High in the midst, a dark-domM shadow see, — 
The Radcliffe, pile of unworn majesty ; 
Around it, silver'd by some window ray, 



part ii. OXFORD. 141 

Whirls many a smoke-wreath in ascending play : 
Beneath, what massy roofs immingled lie, 
Misshap'd by fancy, till they awe the eye ! 
HusrTd are the groves, in verdant darkness veil'd, 
The winds unheard, as though they ne'er had raiPd. — 
But, hark ! — the waving sounds of Wolsey , s d bell. 
Float o'er the city like his last farewell, 
While answ'ring temples, with obedient sound, 
Peal to the night, and moan sad music round ; 
But dread o'er all, like thunder heard in dreams, 
The warning spirit of that echo seems ! — 
Now gates are barr'd ; and, faithful to his stand 
The crusty porter, with his key-worn hand. 



142 OXFORD. part ii. 

Yet not with day, the day-born studies end ; 

Wan cheeks, and weary brows, — I see them bend 

O'er haughty pages breathing ancient mind, 

For Man and Immortality design'd : 

The brain may burn, the martyr'd health may fail, 

And sunken eyelids speak a mournful tale 

Of days protracted into hideous length, 

Till mind is dead, and limbs deny their strength ! 

Still, honours woo ! — and may they smile on thee, 

Whoe'er thou art, that hop'st their smile to see ; 

Hours, days, and years, severer far than thine, 

In toil, and gloom, and loneliness, are mine ! 

The Day is earth, but holy Night is heav'n ! 



part ii. OXFORD. 143 

To her a solitude of soul is giv'n, 

Within whose depth, how beautiful to dream, 

And fondly be, what others vainly seem ! — 

Oh ! 'tis an hour of consecrated might, 

For Earth's Immortals have ador'd the night ; 

In song or vision yielding up the soul 

To the deep grandeur of her still control. — 

My own lov'd hour ! there comes no hour like thee, 

No world so glorious as thou form'st for me ! 

The fretful ocean of eventful day, — 

To waveless nothing how it ebbs away ! 

As oft the chamber, where some haunted page 

Renews a poet, or revives a sage 

In pensive Athens, or sublimer Rome, 



144 OXFORD. pari 

To mental quiet woos the Spirit home. 

There stillness reigns, — how eloquently deep ! 

And soundless air, more beautiful than sleep. 

Let Winter sway, — her dream-like sounds inspire : 

The social murmur of a blazing fire ; 

The hail-drop, hissing as it melts away 

In twinkling gleams of momentary play ; 

Or wave-like swell of some retreated wind 

In dying sadness echo'd o'er the mind, — 

But gently ruffle into varied thought 

The calm of feeling blissful night has brought. — 

How eyes the spirit with contented gaze 

The chamber mellow'd into social haze, 

And smiling walls, where rank'd in solemn rows 



part ir. OXFORD. 145 

The wizard volumes of the mind repose ! 
Thus, well may hours like fairy waters glide, 
Till morning glimmers o'er their reckless tide ; 
While dreams, beyond the realm of day to view, 
Around us hover in seraphic hue ; 
Till Nature pines for intellectual rest, — 
When home awakens, and the heart is blest ; 
Or, from the window reads our wand'ring eye 
The starry language of Chaldean sky ; 
And gathers in that one vast gaze above, 
A bright eternity of awe and love ! 

So heavily seems the visionary night : 

But, ah ! the danger in its deep delight. — 
o 



146 OXFORD. par 

The Mind, then beautify 'd to fond excess, 
Will all things dare to brighten, or to bless : 
A world of sense more spiritual is made, 
Than the stern eye of nature hath survey M ; 
Some false perfection which hath never been, 
By fancy woven, lives through ev'ry scene ; 
But morn awakes, — and, lo the spells unwind, 
As daylight melts like darkness o'er the mind ! 
The worldly coarseness of our common lot 
Recalls the shadows which the Night forgot; 
Each dream of loftiness then dies away, 
And heav^-light withers in the frown of Day !— - 
And then, the languor of each parching vein, 
And the hot weariness of heart and brain ; 



part ir. OXFORD. 147 

That hideous shade of something dread to be, — 

Oh, fatal midnight ! these are doom'd for thee. 

Each breeze comes o^r us with tormenting wing, 

Each pulse of sound an agony can bring ; 

As though the glory of neglected Light 

Would task our torture to avenge her right ! — 

Let Chatterton thy deathful charm reveal, 

And mournful White, who from thy depth would steal 

A whelming sense of some unvision , d PowV, 

Around prevailing at thine earthless hour e : 

And oft, methinks, in loneliness of heart 

As noons of night in dreaming calm depart, 

My room is sadden'd with the mingled gaze 

Of those who martyr'd their ambitious days ; 

o2 



148 OXFORD. part n. 

The turf-grass o'er their tombs, — I see it wave, 
And visions waft me to a kindred grave ! 

But lo ! the yielding dark hath gently died, 
And stars are sprinkled o'er the azure tide 
Of lustrous air, that high and far prevails, 
Where now the night-enchanting glory sails. — 
City of fame ! when Morn's first wings of light 
Have wav'd in beauty o'er thy temples bright ; 
When noontide glows, or darkness hath begun 
To veil a grandeur that withstood the sun, — 
Have I beheld thee ; but a moonrise seems, 
Like hues that wander from a heav'n of dreams, 
To hallow thee, as there thy temples stand 



paht ii. OXFORD. 149 

Sublimely tender, or serenely grand ; 

Spire, tow'r, and pinnacle, a dim array, 

Whose wizard shadows in the moonlight sway ! — 

The stony muteness of thy massive piles, 

Now silver'd o'er by melancholy smiles, 

With more than language, spirit-like appeals 

To the high sense impassion'd nature feels 

Of all that gloriously, in earth or sky, 

Exacts the worship of her gazing eye ! — 

There is a magic in the moon-lit hour 

Which day hath never in his deepest pow'r 

Of light and bloom, when bird and bee resound,. 

And new-born flow'rs imparadise the ground ! 

And ne'er hath city since a moon began 
o3 



150 OXFORD. part ii. 

To hallow nature for the soul of man, 

Steep'd in the freshness of her fairy light, — 

More grandly shone, than Oxford shines to-night ! 

No lines of harshness on her temples frown, 

But all in one soft magic melted down, — 

Sublimer grown, through mellow air they rise, 

And seem with vaster swell to awe the skies ! 

On arched windows how intensely gleams 

The glassy whiteness of reflected beams ! 

Whose radiant slumber on the marble tomb 

Of mitred founders in funereal gloom, 

Extends ; or else, in pallid shyness falls 

On gothic casements, or collegiate walls.— 

The groves in silver-leaf 'd array repose ; 



part it. OXFORD. 151 

And, Isis ! — how serene thy current flows, 

With tinted surface by the meadowy way, 

Without a ripple, or a breeze at play : 

Yet, once again shall summer barks be seen, — 

And furrow'd waters, where their flight has been ; 

While sounding Rapture, as her heroes speed 

From Iffley locks, flies glorying o'er the mead, 

Hails from the bank, as up the river ride 

In oary swiftness and exulting pride, 

Her barks triumphal ! — let the flag be rear'd, 

And thousands echo, when the colour's cheer'd ! — 

Again, upon the wind a wafted swell 

Of booming sound, proclaims a midnight bell ! 

Lo ! phantom clouds come floating by the moon, 



152 OXFORD. part ii. 

Then melt away, — like happiness, too soon ! * 
And as they glide, an overshadowing smile 
Of moving light is mirror'd on each pile. — 
Farewell the scene ! Farewell the fleeting song ! 
Wherein my spirit hath been borne along 
In light and gloom through many a lonely hour, 
With nought to gladden but its own weak pow'r. 
In morning youth far brighter dreams have play'd 
Around a heart which hope has oft betray M, 
Than those which hover o'er this dying strain ; 
But, — faded once, they never form again ! 
Farewell to Oxford ! — soon will flying years 



* So calm the waters, scarce they seem to stray, 
And yet they glide like happiness away. 

Lara. 



part ii. OXFORD. 153 

The word awaken that is spoke by tears : — 
When scheming boyhood plann'd my future lot, 
No scene arose where Oxford center'd not ; 
And now, as oft her many-mingled chimes 
Swell into birth, like sounds of other times, 
Prophetic life a woven myst'ry seems, 
UnravelFd oft by consummated dreams ! 

Farewell ! — if when I cease to haunt her scene 
Some gentle heart remember I have been, 
As Oxford, with her palaces and spires, 
The mind ennobles, or the fancy fires, 
No vain reward his chosen theme attends, 
Howe^r the fate of him who sung it, ends !— 



154 OXFORD. i 

Oh ! fearful Time, the fathomless of thought, 
With what a myst'ry is thy meaning fraught ! 
Thy wings are noiseless in their rush sublime, 
O'er scenes of glory, as o'er years of crime ; 
Yet comes a moment when thy speed is felt, 
Till past and future through our being melt, 
And a faint awfulness from worlds unknown 
In shadowy darkness gathers round our own ! 
A moment ! — well may that a moral be, 
Whoe'er thou art, 'tis memory to thee : 
A tomb it pil'd, a mother bore to heav'n, 
Or, like a whirlwind o'er the ocean driv'n, 
Rush'd on thy fate with desolating sway, 
And flung a desert o'er thy darken'd way ! — 



part ir. OXFORD. 155 

A moment ! — midnight wears her wonted hue, 
And orbs of beauty speck yon skyward view ; 
Deep, hush'd, and holy, is the world around, 
But yet, — what energies of Life abound ; 
Fermenting through the mighty womb of space, 
Where Time and Nature multiply their race, — 
What hearts, whose awful destinies awake, 
Till Heav'n and Hell some daring impulse make ! 
And thou ! far universe to sight unknown, 
Crown'd with thy God, and center'd by His throne ! 
Man cannot soar, but dreams would fain expand 
Their winged powVs o'er thine unclouded land, 
Where Glory circles from the mystic Three, 
Where Life is Love, and Love is Deity ! — 



156 OXFORD. part ii. 

Who breathes, in good and ill must bear his part, 

And each can tell a history of heart, 

How Time hath ting'd the moral of his years 

Through gloom or glory, triumph, pangs, or tears. 

And yet, howe'er the spirit prove her right, 

To give it voice is deenfd a vain delight ; 

And far too deeply is my mem'ry fraught 

With the cold lesson blighted hours have taught, 

To think a life so valueless as mine, 

With the stern feelings of a world may twine. 

But words will swell from out excited mind, 

As heave the waters to the booming wind, 

In some fond mood, when dreaming thoughts control 

Departed years that slumber in the soul ! 



part ii. OXFORD. 157 

Life still is young, but not the world, with me ; 

For where the freshness I was wont to see ? 

A bloom hath vanisrTd from the face of things ; 

Nor more the syren of enchantment sings 

In sunny mead, or shady walk, or bowV, 

Like that which warbled o'er my youthful hour. 

Let reason laugh, or elder wisdom smile 

On the warm phantasies which youth beguile ; 

There is a pureness in that glorious prime 

That mingles not with our maturer time. 

All earth is brighten'd from a sun within, 

As yet unshaded by a world of sin, 

While mind and nature blendingly array 

In light and love, whate'er our dreams survey ; — 
p 



158 OXFORD. pai 

Though perils darken from the distant years, 
They vanish, cloud-like, when a smile appears ! 
And the light woes that flutter o'er the mind 
Are laugh'd away, as foam upon the wind. — 
Thou witching Spirit of a younger hour ! 
Did I not feel thee in thy fullest pow'r ? 
Attest, ye glories ! flash'd from clouds and skies 
On the deep wonder of adoring eyes, 
As oft school-free, I worshipp'd, lone and still, 
The rosy sunset from some haunted hill ; 
Or op'd my lattice, when the moon-shine lay 
In sleep-like beauty on the brow of Day, 
To watch the mystery of moving stars, 
Through ether gliding on melodious cars j 



part ii. OXFORD. 159 

Or musing wander'd, ere the hectic morn, 
To see how beautiful the sun was born ! 

A reign of glory from my soul hath past, 
And each Elysium prov'd mere Earth at last ; 
Yet mourn I not in mock or puling strain, 
For joys are left, which never beam in vain ! — 
The voice of friends, the changeless eye of love, 
And, oh ! that bliss all other bliss above, — 
To know, if shadow frown, or sunshine fall, 
There is One Spirit who pervadeth all ! 

In youth, ambition was the nursing fire 

That quicken'd all bright-omen'd dreams inspire 

p2 



160 OXFORD. part ii, 

Of glory, when Titanic spirits claim 

A godlike heirship of undying fame ! — 

By lake, or wood, or scenes of cloisfral calm, 

When air descendeth in melodious balm ; 

Or, wildly roving with the sun and shade 

Wherever Earth her phantasies displayM, — 

Where heav'd a billow, or outspake a wind 

In tones of passion to accordant mind, 

How oft I ponder'd in delighted mood 

On the bright themes of England's gratitude ! — 

And tell, ye ! whom high nature hath endow'd 

With wing-like thoughts that soar beyond the crowd, 

How Energy would dare to swell and rise, 

What gleams of glory would entrance her eyes, 



part ii. OXFORD. 161 

When words of Fame like heav'nly music rolFd 
O'er the wild spirit which her pow'r controll'd ! — 

And is that Fame, for which our feelings pine 

With yearning fondness, not indeed divine ? 

Are lofty impulses of soul and sense, 

For ever teaching her omnipotence, 

A mimicry of fine emotions ? born 

From the gay wildness of a youthful morn ? — 

Time, Truth, and Nature speak a nobler tale ! 

Her pomp may perish, and her brightness fail, 

But all that verdure which the spirit laid 

O'er the dry wilderness the world display'd, 

In living freshness shall outbloom the hour, 
p3 



162 OXFORD. part 

And scatter earth with many a secret flow'r. — 

Oh ! 'tis not fame, to form the midnight show 

Where Vice and Vanity alike may go ; 

It is not fame, to hear the shallow prate 

Of busy fondness, or intriguing hate. 

To feast on sounds of patronising pride, 

And wring from dulness what the world deny'd, — ■ 

A high-soul'd nature is her own renown ! 

Whate'er the jewels that compose her crown. 

For 'mid the barrenness of mortal strife, 

And daily nothings of uneasy life, 

The spirit thirsteth for a purer world ; 

O'er this the wings of fancy are unfurPd ; 

Hence painter's hue and poet's dream are brought, 



part u. OXFORD. 163 

And the rich paradise of blooming thought ! 

To quench that thirst, — let heav'n-born feelings flow, 

Let genius wake ! let inspiration glow ! — 

Why thus we panted for a world like this 

May form a knowledge in our future bliss. 

All are not fram'd alike : Love, Hope, and Truth, 
That guard our age, and glorify our youth, 
To various minds a varied tone impart ; 
What this man freezes, — fires another's heart ! 
The words that waken melodies of soul, 
In tuneless ears, monotonously roll ; 
The shapes and shadows which Creation forms, 
And Fancy moulds from seasons and from storms 



164 OXFORD. pae 

To living beauty, or to lovely hue, 

And waves them phantom-like before our view,— 

Will rouse the life-blood into fresher play 

Of him who visions what the words array : 

Another, eyeless save to sterner things, 

Will frown them back as false imaginings ! — 

And thus in nature, as her vales reply 

To voices wafted where the echoes lie, 

Our spirits answer to appeals alone, 

When tun'd accordant with some inward tone. — 

Fve stood entranc'd beneath as bright a sun, 

As Poet's dream hath ever gaz'd upon, 

In the warm stillness of that wooing hour 

When skies are floating with seraphic pow'r, — 



part ii. OXFORD. 165 

The gales expiring in melodious death, 

The waters hush'd, the woods without a breath, — 

And worshipp'd, till dissolving sense away 

Seem'd gently dying in the soul of day ! 

But when I looked where lay immingled forms 

Of fairy mountains or refulgent storms, 

Till whelming glory o'er the ether came, 

Like spirits wafted on their wings of flame ! 

And linked cloudlets, delicately bright 

Form'd in the paleness of departing light, — 

Each fainting into each, a long array, 

Like lovely echoes when they glide away ! — 

Another babbled in that beauteous hour, 

The heartless victim of a dead'ning powV ! 



166 OXFORD. part i] 

Thou young aspirer ! darst thou dream of fame, 

And hope another Age will read thy name ? — 

The hidden stirrings of each voiceless pride, 

The pangs unutter'd, by the soul supply'd, 

The ghastly dimness of dejected hope, 

By dreams assail'd, with which no pride can cope ; 

Those nameless thoughts of venom , d fierceness, sent 

From the dark heavings of our discontent ; 

And, dreader still, — the clouds of daily life 

That welter round us in disease or strife, 

And the cold atmosphere of worldly sway 

Where Life is self, and self the life of day,— 

In mingled pow'r will oft thy soul appal ; 

Too well I picture, for I felt them all ! 



partii. OXFORD. 167 

Yet bear thou on ! — and when some breathing page 

Of godlike poet or divinest sage ; 

When fire-like energies of soul begin 

To thrill the passion that is born within, — 

Then let thy Spirit in her pow'r arise, 

And dare to speak the language of the skies ! 

Her voice may fail, in deathlike muteness lost, 

Her hopes be visions, and those visions crost ; 

But, pure and noble if thy song began, 

And pour'd high meaning in the heart of man, 

Not echoless perchance a note hath been 

In some lone heart, or unimagin'd scene. — 

How many a breeze that wings a noiseless way, 

How many a streamlet unbeheld by day, 



168 OXFORD. p^ 

How many a sunbeam lights a lonely flow'r, 
Yet works unseen in its creative pow'r ! — 
Then highly soar, whene'er thy spirit feels 
The vivid light impassion'd thought reveals; 
UnchilFd by scorn, undarken'd by despair, — 
So martyrs livM, and such the mighty were ! 

These are not days of sympathetic glow, 

When feeling sanctions what our smiles bestow 

A false refinement, and a stale desire 

For something nobler than our hopes inspire, 

Pervades a world of intellectual sway, 

Till merit droops, and effort dies away. — 

Some fond idolaters enthrone a mind, 



part ii. OXFORD. 169 

And by its standard measure all mankind : 

No genius great, no inspiration strong, 

No free-born thoughts to fountain truths belong, 

Save his, who fawningly endures to pay 

A fellow worship, — and be wise as they. 

There is a pleasure in a praise denied, 

It feeds a folly, or protects a pride, 

It teaches dulness what no wit can say, — 

" I don't approve, — let no one write to-day." 

Thou narrow-minded, petty, pompous thing ! 

What lent a feather to the boldest wing 

Of soaring fancy, — but a praise when due ? 

And would'st thou hive it for the darling few 
ft 



170 OXFORD. part ii. 

Though Shakespeare sang, and Milton's soul aspir'd, 

Must Gray be seorn'd, nor Goldsmith be admir'd ? — 

As well might Ocean of the Earth demand, 

To let no river roll, no stream expand, 

As well might mountains that embrace the skies 

Entreat the heav'ns to let no hills arise, — 

As mole-ey'd bigots sourly hope to see 

The world of Mind one vast monotony ! 

With others, envy hath gangren'd the soul, 

Or forc'd its nature by a false control ; 

A fault they love, a merit worthless call, 

Their praise the loudest, where it least should fall ! — 

An envious feeling !— 'tis a poison'd fire, 



part ii. OXFORD. 171 

That frets a hell from hours that should inspire ! 

The cloudless ether where high spirits soar 

Was breath'd from homage which they won of yore ; 

To laud a merit is to spread that sphere, 

And make it brighter for thine own to steer. — 

Eternal Spirit ! while thy day-beams smile 

Around my path in many a sunny while, 

Their shining truth, oh ! let my gaze deny, 

Ere merit sickens on mine envious eye : 

As ocean kindles to her native sun, 

As waters freshen when the wind's begun, 

So bright'ning, quick'ning, let my soul confess, 

When genius wakens her almightiness ! — 

ft2 



172 OXFORD. part 

Such dimming shades, thou young aspirer ! wait 

On all who seek to glorify their state. 

But shoukTst thou, wafted by a fearless gale, 

Ascend a height, no vulgar clouds assail ; 

Should fame encrown thee, and thy mind infuse 

O'er other minds its vivifying hues ; 

Wake feeling, passion, and the pow'r sublime 

That bids eternity o'ershadow time ! — 

The sunny raptures of renown enjoy, 

But deem, oh ! deem them not without alloy. — 

The smile of nations may illume thy fame, 

The good repeat, the glorious love thy name, — 

Still, tongues of scorn, and words of venom 1 d pow'r 

To be the vipers of a secret hour, 



part ii. OXFORD. 173 

The petty tribute, and unfeeling phrase 
That nought but iciness of soul betrays, — 
Demand forgiveness in thy brightest reign ; — 
On ev'ry pleasure frowns the demon, pain ! 

But deeper peril is the praise that gives 
That very light in which young genius lives. 
A tyrant weakness is the worst to see, 
All men are vain, yet all hate vanity* ; 
When safely felt, most insecurely shown, 
For who endures it, — save it prove his own ? 
Yet should that energy, whose quenchless ray 



* It has been said, that Heaven, which gave great qualities only 
to a small number of its favourites, gave vanity to all, as a full com- 
pensation {Brown's Philosophy. ) 

q3 



174 OXFORD. pari 

Burns through the blackest and the brightest day, 

Intensely pure within thy spirit glow, 

And colour dreams beyond the world to know ; 

If, eagle-like, thy spirit dares to soar 

On bolder wing than it had wav'd before ; 

If virtue love, and wisdom charm thy strain, — 

If this be vanity, — then still be vain ! 

Oh ! Life, and Fame, to which our natures cling, 
And Glory ! with thine archangelic wing, 
Fleeter than sunshine is the mocking sway 
Of all that kindles your enchanted day. — 
Thou mighty Fathomer of all we feel ! 
If I have worshipp'd with intenser zeal 



part ii. OXFORD. 175 

Their fading brightness, that became a mind 

For some eternity of thought design'd, 

In the deep sadness of a midnight hour 

Oh ! breathe a spirit of sublimer pow'r. 

When I reflect on all that man hath been, 

When god-like thron'd o'er some majestic scene, 

Or prison'd in the pettiness of life, 

And torn from goodness by each tort'ring strife, 

Then feel Hereafter rushing o'er my soul 

In light or gloom, as conscience may control ! — 

The shadowy nothingness of earth I see, 

And find the world one gorgeous vanity ! — 

Oh ! never has some haunting sense of gloom, 

From the dark certainty of coming doom, 



176 OXFORD. part ii. 

My spirit freed from its enthralling sway ; 
By night a presence, and a pow'r by day 
To round each vision with an awful hue 
Of more than midnight, in her darkest view ! 

The air is huslfd, and how omnipotent ! 

Let no stern thought be with its stillness blent. 

The savage words of each ungen'rous foe, 

Vain, true, or envious, — may their meaning go 

To that oblivion of forgiving heart, 

Which, scorned or welcom'd, makes its better part. 

Whate'er my spirit, in it lives a fire 

Beyond the tortures of the world to tire, 

And, fam'd or fameless, may it dare to soar 



part ii. OXFORD. 177 

And ev'ry element of good adore. — 
Oh ! for a nobler and a deeper sense 
Of all that forms our true preeminence ; 
For high-born energies of heav'nly sway, 
And flow'rs of charity to strew the way, — 
That Sin no longer may the world defile, 
And Nature glory in a good man's smile, 
As on we hasten to that dreamless shore 
Where Passion sleeps, and Prejudice is o'er ! 

The days of fever and the nights of fire, 
Felt in the blood till health and hope expire ; 
The ghastly slumber, and the spectral tomb 
For ever yawning in the spirit's gloom ; 



178 OXFORD. ya 

And that most agonizing waste of soul 
Where all the billows of excitement roll, 
Morn, noon, and night in one eternal play, — 
Are thine, ambition ! — till thou wear'st away. 
And, mix'd with agonies of outward state, 
That inward torment, which thy dreams create 
By thirst within for some perfection made 
By thought alone, or never yet display'd 
Like the pure model which the mind surveys— 
'Tis thine to suffer through uncounted days ! 
Yet, welcome all ! — If ever thought of mine 
Hath woo'd a spirit into calm divine, 
Expanded feelings, purified their flow, 
Or shed a sunbeam o^r an hour of woe, — 



part ii. OXFORD. 179 

My soul shall triumph o'er exhaustless pain, 
And proudly think it has not hVd in vain ! 

There is a world, to drown a world like this 

In one bright depth of unimagin'd bliss ! 

And dreamlike shadows of that world remain 

To awe our nature with majestic pain. 

As the pale spirit of departed sun 

Broods on the waters when the day is done, — 

Undying hues of some forgotten world, 

From which primeval Nature hath been hurl'd, 

To man's oblivion, tinge the soul within 

With solemn light, beyond the gloom of sin ! — 

Beneath the glory of Eternal wings 



180 OXFORD. part u 

When Heav^i resounds, and Earths hosannah rings, 
If in the splendour of that choral scene 
A chastening memory of what has been 
May still endure, — when Souls to Souls relate 
The toils that ruffled their terrestrial state, 
How vision-like will this vast world be thought, 
And all we worship, — prov'd a dream of nought ! 

Ye midnight heav'ns ! magnificently hung, 

In evVy age by evVy poet sung, 

One parting glance, oh ! let my spirit take 

Ere dawn-light on your awful beauty break. 

With what intensity the eye reveres 

Yon starry legions, when their pomp appears ! — 



part ii. OXFORD. 181 

As though the glances centuries have giv'n, 

Since dreams first wandered o'er the vast of heav'n, 

Had left a magic where a myst'ry shone, 

Enchanting more, the more 'tis gaz'd upon ! 

Stars, worlds, or wonders ! — whatsoe'er ye shine, 

The home of angels, or the haunts divine, 

Wherein the bodiless, from earth set free, 

Shine in the blaze of present Deity ! — 

No eyes behold your ever-beaming ray, 

Nor think how earthly visions roll away, 

While ye in one eternal calmness glow 

Above the chaos of terrestrial woe ! — 

Thy wings, Almighty ! may they still o'ershade 

A Land by Thee a matchless empire made ; 



182 OXFORD. par 

While rocking cities into ruin fall *, 

And Death in thunder rolls his voice o'er all ! 

Here in calm glory may Thine altars stand, 

While smiles from heaven fall brightly o'er the land ! 

And those pure worlds, that have for ages rolPd 

O'er these grand temples, still their gloom behold ; 

Till time be dead, eternity begun, 

And darkness blacken round the dying sun ; 

The toils of fate, the pangs of being o'er, 

Our doom completed, and the world no more ! 

* An allusion to the fall of Antwerp. 



NOTES. 



NOTES TO PART I. 



Note a, page 26. 
" Consider me very seriously here in a strange country, inhabited by 
things that call themselves Doctors and Masters of Arts; a country 
flowing with syllogisms and ale, where Horace and Virgil are equally 
unknown; consider me, I say, in this melancholy light; and then 
think if something be not due to yours," &c. 
Christ Church, Nov. 14, 1735. 

Such is the amusive pertness with which West, Gray's friend, alludes 
to this university. In another letter, he talks about " half a dozen new 
little procterlings." — This rebellious description of his Alma Mater is 
more than matched by the sarcasm of Gray, in speaking of Cambridge. 
" Surely it was of this place, now Cambridge, but formerly known by 
the name of Babylon, that the prophet spoke when he said, ' the wild 
beasts of the desert shall dwell there, and their houses shall be full of 
doleful creatures, and owls shall build there, and satyrs shall dance 
there; their forts and towers shall be a den for ever, a joy of wild 
asses, &c. &c.' You must know that I do not take degrees, and after 
this term shall have nothing more of college impertinences to undergo. 
I have endured lectures daily and hourly since I came last. — Must I 
plunge into metaphysics ? Alas! I cannot see in the dark; nature has 
not furnished me with the optics of a cat. Must I pore upon mathe- 
matics? Alas! I cannot be in too much light; I am no eagle — It is 
very possible that two and two make four, but I would not give four 
farthings to demonstrate this ever so clearly." — Letters. 

" To Oxford," says Gibbon, " I brought a stock of erudition that 
might have puzzled a doctor, and a degree of ignorance of which a school-, 
boy might have been ashamed." 

r3 



186 OXFORD. [notes. 

Lord King, in his Life of Locke, remarks ; " That Locke re- 
gretted his education at Oxford, is stated upon the authority of his 
friend Le Clerc." He adds, however, " Perhaps too much stress has 
heen laid upon some accidental expressions ; or rather that the regrets 
expressed by Locke ought to have been understood by Le Clerc, to 
apply to the plan of education then generally pursued at English uni- 
versities ; for to Oxford, even as Oxford was in the days of Locke, he 
must have been considerably indebted. If the system of education did not 
offer assistance, or afford those directions so useful to a young student, 
the residence of Oxford did no doubt confer ease, leisure, and the oppor- 
tunity of other studies; it afforded also the means of intercourse with 
persons from whose society and conversation we know that the idea of 
his great work arose." 

" Too much stress" has indeed been laid upon ebullitions of peevish- 
ness against the system pursued at our universities, which occur in 
the works and correspondence of a few celebrated men. With regard 
to Gray's opinion, it has been justly remarked, " At the time when he 
was admitted, Jacobitism and hard drinking prevailed still at Cambridge, 
much to the prejudice not only of good manners, but of good letters. 
But we see (as was natural enough to a young man) he laid the blame 
rather on the mode of education, than the mode of the times." In allu- 
sion to Gibbon's taunts, a biographer observes; " By his course of de- 
sultory reading, he seems unconsciously to have been led to that particu- 
lar branch in which he was afterwards to excel. But whatsoever con- 
nexion this had with his more distant life, he was exceedingly deficient 
in classical learning, and went to Oxford without either the taste or pre- 
paration which could enable him to reap the advantages of academical 
education. This may possibly account for the harshness with which he 
speaks of the universities. His fourteen months at Magdalen were 
idle and profitless; and he describes himself as ' gay, and disposed to 
late hours.' When he sat down to write his memoirs — the memoirs of 
an eminent and accomplished scholar — he found a blank which is seldom 
found in the biography of English scholars ; the early display of genius, 
the laudable emulation, and the well-earned honours; he found that he 
owed no fame to his academical residence, and therefore determined that 



parti.] OXFORD. 187 

no fame should be desirable from an university education." — Ex uno 
disce omnes. 

Notes t>, c, &c. page 27, 28. 

K Circ. A. M. 2855, and 1180 before Christ, Gerion and twelve more 
learned Greeks accompanied the conqueror Brutus * into this isle ; others, 

* My venerated friend, Sharon Turner, pronounces the account of Brutus and 
his colony of Greek philosophers, to be an historical fiction. In the History op 
the Anglo-Saxons, vol. II. p. i$$ — 157. there is a note relative to a contest for 
priority of foundation, once carried on between the two great universities ; but now 
happily lost in the nobler feeling of intellectual rivalry. As the note is interesting, 
no apology is offered for presenting it to the reader. 

" We have referred to this place a cursory review of the former discussions be- 
tween Oxford and Cambridge, which have been connected with the memory of 
Alfred. This dispute did not burst out publicly till the reign of Elizabeth. When 
the queen visited Cambridge in 1564, the orator of the university unfortunately de- 
clared in his harangue, that Cambridge truly claimed a superior antiquity to Oxford. 
Enraged that an attempt should have been insidiously made to prepossess the ear 
of majesty to its prejudice, Oxford retaliated the aggression, by asserting, in a 
written composition to the queen when she came to the university in 1566, that it 
was Oxford, and Oxford only, which could truly boast the earliest foundation. 

" Wars, horrid wars, became then the business and the amusement of every stu- 
dent. Cantabs and Oxonians arranged themselves to battle ; and every weapon of 
polemical erudition and polemical fury was raised against each other. 

" Caius, one of the leaders in this discussion, published a quarto, in defence of 
Cambridge, in 1574. He said he came to restore peace ; as if, by assuring the world 
that Cambridge was in the right, he could ever give tranquillity to Oxford. 

" Oxford denied the right of an insidious partisan to be a peacemaker ; and at last 
Bryan Twyne appeared, with a book as large and as full as that of Caius, in which 
the glory of Oxford was sturdily and angrily maintained. Many combatants at va- 
rious intervals succeeded, and the conflict became as ardent as, from the fragility of 
the materials, it was ineffectual. 

" Some of the friends of Cambridge managed to see the first stones of their uni- 
versity laid in the 173rd year after the flood. Others, however, ivho were not blessed 
with optics, which had the faculty of seeing what had never been visible, very 
wisely postponed the existence of their favourite till about four centuries before the 
Christian sera. At that period, they found out that one Cantaber, a royal Spanish 
emigrant, who came to England in the days of Gurguntius, had sent for Greek phi- 
from Athens, and given to Cambridge a local habitation and a name. 
It was easy for Oxford to object, that Cantaber was but one of those airy no- 



188 OXFORD. [notes. 

soon after, delighted with a relation of the country, came and seated 
themselves with them, at a place, the most agreeable and convenient at 
that time for study, called in their native or mother tongue Greeklade, — 
a word made upon the occasion; vocabulo a re nato. 

" Others were seated at a place equally eligible for its wholesomeness 
and conveniency, near the other, hence called Latinlade. This was 
destined for a Latin school. These two languages comprehended the 
learning of the greatest parts of the then known world. At these they 
continued till a more fit or larger place was assigned them, for collecting 
their scattered and increasing parties, in order for a more general semi- 
nary or study. By favour of the Founder, these philosophers were pitched 
upon to contrive and order the situation of the city. No sooner was the 
new seat erected, or made fit for their reception, than they repaired to 
it, as to a well laid out garden, calling it their Belle-Situm, or sweet 
situation. This may be called their first general study. 

" In these early times the university was a little way, that is about a 
quarter of a mile distant from the city, the contrivers of it taking a pat- 
tern from their own country ; for the Gymnasia among the Greeks were 
separate from the city, on account that they should not bury in cities ; 
it being prohibited by Solon's laws. And again by the Romans, at the 
promulgation of the twelve tables. They that affected learning among the 
Britons, affected privacy, delighted much in groves, which the Belle- 
Situm at that time particularly abounded with. Hither they transferred 

things which the poet or the antiquary in his frenzy discerns. It was not more dif- 
ficult to laugh at the wise and learned giants, who were placed as the Aborigines of 
our island, and who first cultivated literature. But the Oxonian champion did not 
content himself with destroying all the superstructures of Cambridge vanity. The 
heralds of national ancestry are as fond of their own chimeras as they are intolerant 
of the antiquarian progeny of others. Hence, though the advocate of Oxford de- 
nied to Cambridge its Cantaber, he conceived it to be just to claim for Oxford a co- 
lony of Greek philosophers, who came into the island with Brutus, and established 
a colony at Cricklade, which was afterwards translated to Bello-Situm where Oxford 
now stands. 

" The fame of Oxford was, however, not wholly entrusted to phantoms. A basis 
more secure was found for it in a passage printed under the name of Asser ; and it 
is this unfortunate passage which has connected the dispute with the history of 
Alfred." 



parti.] OXFORD. 189 

their studia or schools, instituting and intitling these their Academia or 
university." — From a rare pamphlet on the Ancient History of Oxford ; 
published in 1772. 



Note d, page 28. 

" But who will say that Caesar was not here himself, and visited and 
saw the Study or School 9 Caesar passed over the Tamise about Walling- 
ford, ten miles from Oxford ; and he fought after, about Cirencester — 
his route thus leading through or near Oxford. Nor were these acts of a 
private nature, but as now in our Universities of a public and general 
institution. And so great was their fame in learning and discipline, 
that foreigners, especially numbers of youth from Gaul, to be masters or 
adepts in these sciences, travelled hither, as to the most learned semi- 
nary, for education." — [Old Pamphlet.) 

Note e, p. 29. 

" Bale in his account of Kentigern, 560. A. C. himself a member of 
this university, describes him as thus habited : ' Melote ex caprinis pel- 
libus et cuculla stricta candidaque contectus stola.' Wolfe writes — ' in 
vestitu veteres usi fuerunt cuculla, tunica et scapulare.' The tunic 
reaching to the knees, or a little lower, was plaited on the shoulders, not 
unlike the Taberdor's gown, the proper vestment of scholars, called 
Vestis propria clerorum. But the principal, or to be particidarized from 
the rest, was the Toga Gbjecanica, (a Greeds rvfeggos, a riyw, to 
cover,) said to be derived from the Pelasgians, and most ancient Grecians 
of the university. This was part of our old dress, and made originally 
with loose sleeves, not unlike that in after-ages used by the Benedictine 
order. The Pileus (a tiXo;), or cap, was no strange thing to our Gre- 
cian or British students. In the earliest times the square cap was in 
fashion ; but long after the doctors wore the round. And they wore 
hoods, the most ancient whereof hung behind on the back, sewed or tied 
to the gown, and, on occasion being raised, covered their head, much as 
a capuchin, whence called cappa, and the wearers cappers. The epomis 



190 OXFORD. [notes. 

(ww/<k) was antiently lined with the skins of beasts ; or as now, with 
lambskins hanging round the neck, and falling upon, and covering the 
greatest part of the back ; called by Erasmus, capitum rnagisterii. And 
the short boot which the masters wore at taking of degrees, spoke of in 
the antientest records, as derived from the Greeks, was a custom which 
prevailed here till the institution of Doctorate of Theology and Civil 
Law. Which happening, the masters chose for themselves, in their 
stead, slippers : these they used in their time of inception during the 
Act season, till an order of convocation exempted them from it." — (-Do.) 



NoTEf, p. 31. 

" The work of the schools being wholly finished, stored with scholars, 
and furnished with professors in all sciences and faculties, the king him- 
self (whose memory, says Hyde, shall be as sweet as honey in every 
man's mouth,) attended with his nobles in great solemnity, graced the 
first lectures with his own presence, nor ever ceased till he saw his work 
brought unto full perfection." — {Do.) 

Note s, page 32. 

" King Edward departing in 1066, was succeeded by William the 
Conqueror. Besides the houses taken or despoiled by him, were many 
hotels or halls for scholars, whereof Robert Doyly had forty-two. But, 
not willing to carry things too far against an university, in order to 
secure the better the throne to him and his posterity, he thought of 
milder terms, and sent his third and youngest son, Henry, to study here, 
Avhich gave great reputation to the place, and it became soon filled with 
scholars." — (Do.) 

Note h, page 35. 

New College. At the Reformation, it was despoiled and disrobed. 
In 1789, the Society ordered a complete repair. The chapel was newly 
roofed, the seats decorated M'ith canopies, and the organ-loft raised over 
the entrance in a style to correspond with the altar. 



parti.] OXFORD. 191 

Note i, page 37. 
A well written description of this magnificent scene was published 
immediately after the Royal Visit, to which the following extract is in- 
debted. A laughable bit of puppyism, resembling the periodical bow- 
wow sometimes heard in our day, occurs however in the critique ap- 
pended to it, on the prize poems recited in the theatre on this occasion : 
" We turn with peculiar pleasure to Mr. Hughes's composition. With- 
out the affectation of originality, Mr. H. appears to have scorned imita- 
tion, and wisely to have risen above the jargon of Scott and Byron /" 

Note J, p. 38. 

" About ten o'clock the great doors of the theatre opened, Dr. Crotch 
at the organ, accompanied by the whole band, played the march in the 
occasional overture. No other sound was heard but the soft strains of 
the music, as the bedels entered the theatre. At length our gracious 
Prince, preceded by the Chancellor, appeared uncovered upon the thresh- 
old, and in an instant the thunders of applause pealed on every side. 
Next to his Royal Highness came the Emperor, and then the King of 
Prussia, in their robes, as doctors of law. Then followed the Duchess 
of Oldenburg, accompanied by the Duke of York. The Russian and 
foreign princes, and noblemen, and all the honorary members of the 
university who were present ; the heads of houses, doctors, and the two 
proctors, formed the rest of this beautiful and unique procession. The 
applause had continued long after the whole had reached their places, 
and the assembly of three thousand persons continued standing till it 
had been intimated by the Prince, and stated by the Chancellor, that 
his Royal Highness wished every one to be seated. It is impossible to 
describe the combined effect of the scene. Above the rest of the univer- 
sity, to the left of the Prince, sat the Chancellor, in his robes of black 
and gold, and his long band of most exquisite lace. Even with the 
Chancellor on the right, sat the Duchess of Oldenburg, in a simple 
dress of white satin, and no ornament upon her head. And still higher, 
the three sovereigns were seated on superb chairs of crimson velvet and 
gold, and their feet resting upon footstools of the same. The chair of 



192 OXFORD. [notes. 

the Prince Regent was surmounted by a plume of feathers in gold, and 
the whole platform on which these five seats were placed, was covered 
with crimson velvet. Immediately behind the royal chairs were seated 
a double row of ladies, who constituted the party of Lady Grenville, 
being composed of all the ladies of rank, who were present on the occasion. 
The rest of this gallery which extends all round the theatre, was then 
completely filled with ladies, and above all in the highest gallery, supported 
by pillars, were the junior members of the university. Immediately below 
the Prince were seated in a crescent semicircle, the whole of the persons 
who formed the procession, in their different robes ; and the area was 
filled with the senior members of the university, with officers of the 
army and navy, and a small number of select strangers. The sight was 
altogether new. Others have seen these royal strangers, as august per- 
sonages, visiting almost in private, a foreign, but friendly country — the 
University of Oxford has seen them seated on their thrones, in all the 
pomp, and all the condescension of majesty." 

Note k, page 43. 

Addison was entered at Queen's, 1687 — In 1689, his Latin verses, 
Inauguratio Regis Gulielmi, procured him the patronage of Dr. Lancas- 
ter, by whose recommendations he was elected a demy at Magdalen. 
While a student here, he wrote parts of " Cato," and forwarded them to 
Dryden, who admired them as poetry, but doubted their dramatical 



Note 1, page 44. 

Steele was removed in 1692 from the Charter-house to Merton. In 
1695, his first production, a poem on Queen Mary, appeared. The Tatler 
was commenced on April 12, 1709. Addison discovered its author by 
the insertion of a criticism on a passage in Virgil, which he had formerly 
communicated to him. The passage alluded to in the text is quoted by 
the elegant essayist, Dr. Drake, as a beautiful example of his pathetic 

powers " The first sense of sorrow I ever knew," says he, " was upon 

the death of my father, at which time I was not quite five years of age; 



parti.] OXFORD. 193 

but was rather amazed at what all the house meant, than possessed with 
a real understanding why nobody was willing to play with me. I re- 
member 1 went into the room where his body lay, and my mother sat 
weeping alone by it. I had my battledore in my hand, and fell a beating 
the coffin, and calhng ' Papa !' for I know not how I had some slight 
idea that he was locked up there. My mother catched me in her arms, 
and, transported beyond all patience of the silent grief she was before in, 
she almost smother'd me in her embrace ; and told me in a flood of tears, 
' Papa coidd not hear me, and would play with me no more, for they 
were going to put him under ground, whence he could never come to us 
again.' " 

Note in, p. 46. 

In 1740, Collins stood first in the list of Winchester scholars, to be re- 
ceived in succession at New College ; but there being no vacancy, he be- 
came a commoner of Queen's ; from whence in half a year he was elected 
a demy of Magdalen. His early life appears to have been one continued 
scene of melancholy, want, and obscurity; and, contrasting his present 
fame with his once unnoticed merit, we may well recall an observation made 
by Goldsmith, in his Life of ParneU ; " A poet while living is seldom 
an object sufficiently great to attract much attention ; his real merits are 
known but to a few, and these are generally sparing in their praises. 
When his fame is increased by time, it is then too late to investigate 
the peculiarities of his disposition ; the dews of the morning are past, 
and we vainly try to continue the chase by the meridian splendour !" 

The most touching anecdote in his life is thus related by Johnson : 
" He had withdrawn from study, and travelled with no other book than 
an English Testament, such as children carry to the school : when his 
friend took it into his hand, out of curiosity, to see what companion a 
man of letters had chosen : ' I have but one book,' said Collins, ' but 
that is the best.' " 

For biographical illustration of the morbid sensibilities and melancholies 
to which men of genius are peculiarly subject, the reader is referred to 
D'Israeli's interesting work on the Literary Character. Allan 



194 OXFORD. [notes. 

Cunningham, in his Life of sir Christopher Wren, has the following allu- 
sion. " The wives of men of genius, in our earlier biographies, are 
treated with a sort of masculine indifference ; but a gentler and a juster 
feeling has of late shewn itself. The man of genius and sensibility is 
pretty sure to have his moments of doubt and fear, when his noblest works 
seem weak or absurd ; nay, even his days of despondency, when exhausted 
by mental exertions he can no longer think with clearness, and believes 
that his powers are forsaking him ; and he is not unlikely, moreover, to 
be acquainted with those worldly miseries, sad enough to all hearts, but 
doubly so to his, whom a wise one of the tribe pronounces to be 
A thing unteatliable in worldly skill." 

Note n, p. 48. 

Johnson's rooms, with some slight alteration in their division, and the 
substitution of a Gothic window for the plainer one of his own time, remain 
as he left them. On entering them, who does not remember his own 
grand sentence ? " To abstract the mind from all local emotion would 
be impossible if endeavoured, and would be foolish if it were possible ! 
Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses ; whatever makes 
the past, the distant, or the future, predominate over the present, advances 
us in the dignity of thinking beings. Far from me, and from my friends, 
be such frigid philosophy as may conduct us indifferent and unmoved 
over any ground which has been dignified by wisdom, bravery, or virtue. 
That man is little to be envied, whose patriotism would not gain force 
upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer 
among the ruins of Iona." 

There is nothing romantic in their appearance, distinct from other col- 
legiate chambers ; but the sombre hue which pervades them is not un- 
congenial with the associations which arise when we enter their hallowed 
precincts. Here, as the pensive shades of twilight closed around him, and 
the loneliness of his fate darkened on his mind, we can easily imagine 
him retired from the scene his gay hypocrisy had enlivened, to nurse 
those moods of feeling which afterwards revealed themselves in the me- 
lancholy wisdom of " Rasselas," and the moral gloom of the " Rambler." 



part i.] OXFORD. 195 

Johnson was entered a commoner of Pembroke on the 31st of Oct.1728, 
in his 19th year. The following are the principal anecdotical allusions to 
his collegiate life, as recorded by his worshipper and biographer. 

" The Rev. Dr. Adams, who afterwards presided over Pembroke col- 
lege, gave me some account of what passed on the night of Johnson's ar- 
rival at Oxford. His father seemed very full of the merits of his son, 
and told the company he was a good scholar, and a poet, and wrote Latin 
verses. His figure and manner appeared strange to them ; but he be- 
haved modestly, and sat silent, till upon something which occurred in the 
course of conversation, he suddenly struck in, and quoted Macrobius. 
Johnson gave the following account of his tutor, Mr. Jorden, — ' He was 
a very worthy man, but a heavy man, and I did not profit much by his 
instructions. Indeed I did not attend him much. The first day I came 
to college I waited on him, and then stayed away four. On the sixth 
Mr. Jorden asked me why I had iot attended. I answered, I had been 
sliding in Christ Church meadow. And this I said with as much non- 
chalance, as I am now talking to you. I had no notion that I was 
wrong or irreverent to my tutor — ' That, sir, was great fortitude of 
mind.' ' No, sir, stark insensibility.' 

" What he read solidly at Oxford was Greek ; not the Grecian histo- 
rians, but Homer and Euripides, and now and then a little epigram. One 
day while sitting in his apartment quite alone, Dr. Panting, then master 
of the college, overheard him uttering this soliloquy in his strong emphatic 
voice : ' Well, I have a mind to see what is done in other places of 
learning ; I'll go and visit the universities abroad ; I'll go to France and 
Italy ; I'll go to Padua, — and I'll mind my own business. For an Athe- 
nian blockhead is the worst of all blockheads.' " 



Note nn, p. 50. 

" Dr. Adams told me, that Johnson, while he was at Pembroke college, 
was caressed and loved by all about him, was a gay and frolicsome fellow, 
and passed there the happiest time of bis life. When I mentioned this 
account of Dr. Adams, he said, ' Ah, sir, I was mad and violent ; it was 
bitterness which they mistook for frolic; I was miserably poor, and 
s2 



196 OXFORD. [notes, 

thought to fight my way by my literature and my wit ; so I disregarded 
all power and authority.' — The bishop of Dromore observes to me in a 
letter, — ' I have heard from some of his contemporaries, that he was ge- 
nerally seen lounging at the college gate with a circle of young students 
round him, whom he was entertaining with wit, and keeping from their 
studies, if not spiriting them up to rebellion against the college discipline, 
which in his maturer years he so much extolled.' 

" He contracted a love and regard for Pembroke, which he retained to 
the last. A short time before his death, he sent to that college a present 
of all his works, to be deposited in their library. He took a pleasure in 
boasting of the many eminent men who had been educated at Pem- 
broke." 

Note o, p. 54. 

Mr. Tyers, who knew Johnson intimately, observed, " that he always 
tallied as if he were talking upon oath." 



Note p, p. 55. 
A solitary cup of milkless tea was one of his domestic penances 

Note q, p. 57. 

" William D'Avenant made his first entry on the stage of this vain 
world in the parish of St. Martin in the month of February, and on the 
third of the following March, an. 1605-6, he received baptism in the 
church of that parish. His father, John D'Avenant, was a sufficient 
vintner, a very grave and discreet citizen, yet an admirer and lover of 
plays and play-makers, especially Shakespeare, who frequented his 
house in his journeys between Warwickshire and London. William, 
'the sweet Swan of Isis,' was educated in grammar learning under 
Edward Sylvester, and in academical in Lincoln College, under the care 
of Mr. Daniel Hough, and obtained there some smattering in logic. 
But his geny, which was opposite to it, led him into the pleasant paths 
of poetry." — {Athena.) 



parti.] OXFORD. 197 

Note r, p. 57. 

This wonderful man in the course of his itineracy is supposed to have 
travelled nearly 300,000 miles, and to have preached above 40,000 ser- 
mons ! Well, indeed, as Southey remarks, would it be for the world, if 
every man of equal celebrity had left a diary such as Wesley's ! From 
the Charter-house in 1720 he was removed to Christ Church, and from 
thence in 1726 he was elected fellow of Lincoln. " Though Wesley was 
not yet eccentric in the habits of his life, the strictness of his religious 
principles was sufficiently remarkable to afford subject for satire ; and 
his opponents hoped to prevent his success by making him ridiculous. 
On this occasion his father told him it was a shallow virtue that could not 
bear being laughed at. His mother encouraged him in a different man- 
ner. ' If,' said she, ' it be a weak virtue that cannot bear being 
laughed at, I am sure it is a strong and well-confirmed virtue that can 
stand the test of a brisk buffoonery.' On his election, which was 
greatly indebted to the good-will of Dr. Morley, then rector, his father 
thus congratulates him : — ' What will be my own fate before the sum- 
mer is over, God knows ! sed passi graviora Wherever I am, my "Jack 

is Fellow of Lincoln.' 

" While he was an undergraduate, his manners were free and easy ; 
and that activity of disposition, which bore him afterwards through such 
uninterrupted labour, displayed itself in wit and vivacity." 

The rise of methodism is thus traced by his able biographer : " His 
disposition, his early education, the example of his parents, and of both 
his brethren, were in unison : not knowing how or when he woke out 
of his lethargy, he imputed the change to the efficacy of another's 
prayers, most likely he said, his mother's; and meeting with two or 
three undergraduates whose principles resembled his own, they associated 
together for the purpose of religious improvement, lived by rule, and re- 
ceived the sacrament. The greatest prudence would not have sufficed 
to save men from ridicule, who at such an age, and in such a scene, pro- 
fessed to make religion the great business of their lives : and prudence 
is rarely united with enthusiasm. They were called in derision, Bible- 
bigots, Bible-moths, the Holy, or the Godly Club. One person with less 
s 3 



198 OXFORD. [notes. 

irreverence and more learning observed, in reference to their methodical 
manner of life, that a new sect of methodists was sprung up, alluding to 
the ancient School of Physicians known by that name." 



Note s, p. 58. 

James Hervey, author of " Meditations among the Tombs," written 
while he held the curacy of Bedford in Devonshire. He was one of 
Wesley's earliest religious associates at Oxford. 



Note t, p. 59. 

Anthony Wood gives a glowing account of Sidney in his Athena : 
" The poets of his own time, especially Spencer, reverenced him not only 
as a patron, but a master. He was a man of a sweet nature, of excel- 
lent behaviour, of much, and withal of well digested learning ; so that 
rarely wit, courage, breeding, and other additional accomplishments of 
conversation have met in so high a degree in any single person. It is to 
be wished that his life might be written by some judicious hand *. 

" While he was very young he was sent to Christ Church to be im- 
proved in all sorts of learning. In the year 1579 he, though neither 
magistrate or counsellor, opposed the queen's matching with the duke of 
Anjou. On the 8th of January, 1582, he received the honour of knight- 
hood from the queen, and in 1585 he designed an expedition with sir 
Francis Drake into America ; but, being hindered by the queen, he was 
in October following made governor of Flushing, and general of the 
horse. In both which places of great trust his carriage testified to the 
world his wisdom and valour, with addition of honour to his country by 
them ; and especially the more, when in July, 1 586, he surprised Axil, 
and preserved the lives and honour of the English army at the enter- 
prise of Gravelin. What can be said more ? He was a statesman, sol- 
dier, and scholar ; a complete master of matter and language, as his im- 



* Mr. Grey of Magdalen, a short time since, published a splendid edition of Sid- 
ney's works, with Memoirs, &c. &c. 



part i.] OXFORD. 199 

mortal pen shews. His pen and his sword have rendered him famous 
enough. He died by the one, and by the other he'll ever live. Certain 
it is, that he was a noble and matchless gentleman ; and it may be justly 
said without hyperbole or fiction, as it was of Cato Uticensis, that he 
seemed to be born to that only which he went about." 



Note u, p. 59. 

"Benjamin Jonson, a poet as soon as he was born, afterwards the 
father of our poetry, and most admirably well versed in classical authors, 
and therefore beloved of Camden, Selden, Hoskins, Martin, &c. made 
his first entry on the stage of this vain world within the city of West- 
minster, (being the son of a grave minister,) educated in the college 
school there, while Camden was master ; thence his silly mother, who 
had married to her second husband, a bricklayer, took him home, and 
made him, as 'tis said, work at her husband's trade. At length, being 
pitied by some generous gentleman, Camden got him a better employ- 
ment, which was to accompany a son of sir Walter Raleigh's in his ad- 
ventures. After their return they parted, not, I think, in cold blood ; 
and thereupon Ben went to Cambridge and was statutably elected into 
St. John's college ; but what continuance he made there I find not; sure 
it is, that his geny being most poetical, he did afterwards recede to a 
nursery, or obscure playhouse, called the Green Curtain. Dr. Rich 
Corbet of Christ Church, and other poets of the university, did in reve- 
rence to his parts, invite him to Oxon, where continuing for some time in 
Christ Church, writing and composing plays, he was, as a member there- 
of, actually created master of arts in 1619, and therefore I put him 
among the Oxford writers. At length, B. Jonson, after he had arrived 
at the sixty-third year of his age, marched off from the stage of this vain 
world on the 16th of August 1637." (Athence.) 

Note x, p. 59. 
Locke was sent to Christ Church in 1651, and was speedily distin- 
guished among his fellow collegians. He resided partly in Exeter 
house, and partly at Oxford. 



200 OXFORD. [notes. 

Note y, p. 60. 

"In 1670, his great work, the Essay on the Understanding, was sketched 
out. It arose from the meeting, as the author says, of five or six friends 
at his chambers." (Lord King's Life of Locke.) 

We may add to this, that in 1694 Mr. Wynne, fellow of Jesus, first 
recommended his Essay to the study of the university. 

Note z, p . 63. 

From Eton Canning was removed to Christ Church, where he gained 
several prizes. From Oxford he went to the Temple, and studied the 
Law ; but being patronised by Sheridan, he was brought forward into 
political life, and returned member of parliament for Newtown in the 
Isle of Wight. Canning made his first speech, equally distinguished for 
its modesty and eloquence, on the treaty between his Majesty and the 
king of Sardinia on the 31st of January, 1794. 

As a statesman and a patriot, the world can do justice to Canning's 
fame ; as the fascinating companion in private life, the memory of those 
who were honoured with his regard, can alone enjoy him. They may 
truly apply to themselves, with a slight alteration, the words of a great 
historian on the death of his revered friend*, " Finis vitae ejus nobis luc- 
tuosus, patriae tristis, extraneis etiam ignotisque non sine cura fuit." 
" Quicquid ex Agricola amavimus, quidquid mirati sumus, manet mansu- 
rumque est in animis hominum, in aeternitate temporum, fama, rerum." 

The following extracts are taken from a short account of the " Early 
Days of Canning," which was published by Mr. Newton : 

" Mr. Canning quitted Mr. Richards's school at Winchester in 1782, 
and in the same year, at about twelve years old, was sent to Eton. He is 
described to have made a considerable progress at Winchester, such as suf- 
ficiently to account for the distinguished rank which he held at Eton, 
where he was at once placed in the fourth form, and was never therefore 
in the lower school. He obtained the post of honour in the public speeches 
of 1787, by being made the last speaker, and he must consequently have 
* Tacit, in Agricol. c. 43. 46. 



part i.] OXFORD. 201 

been very high in the school when he quitted it for the university. Mr. 
Robert Smith, the late representative in parliament for Lincoln, who alone, 
of all the Etonians at that period, rivalled Mr. Canning in abilities, deli- 
vered, in 1788, a speech antecedently spoken by his friend, and this occa- 
sioned a warm discussion among the boys on their comparative merits. 
These two, together with Mr. Smith's brother, and Mr. John Hookham 
Frere, who was during the late war our envoy at Madrid, were the au- 
thors, while at school, of the Microcosm, to which periodical work a few 
other Etonians contributed papers occasionally. Dr. Pett, canon of Christ 
Church, who lately declined a bishopric which was offered to him with 
circumstances of peculiar grace and favour, was Mr. Canning's tutor, 
as he was mine ; and in our various walks of life, we have seldom found 
a person who united with literary acquirements qualities more amiable, 
more considerate, and more estimable. He would have adorned the 
mitre. When I heard that Mr. Canning had only left behind him a 
small fortune, it did not at all surprise me, for he possessed from his 
youth a most liberal spirit in pecuniary matters. At college his habits 
were uniformly studious. Enter his rooms in Peckwater when you 
would, you were almost sure to find him occupied with a pen or a book. 
Superior to all idle amusements, improvement was his continual object. 
He did not even keep a horse, and I have no recollection that he ever 
hired one. 

" In the year 1787, a speaking society was established at Christ Church, 
the members of which were the Hon. Robert Banks Jenkinson, now 
lord Liverpool, George Canning, lord Henry Spencer, sir William 
Drummond, sometime British ambassador at Constantinople, Charles 
Goddard, and myself. Most of these names are well known in the 
world, and are connected with the history of the country. 

" Mr. Goddard, soon after he quitted Oxford, was the private secretary 
of lord Grenville, at whose house, in St. James's square, Mr. Canning, 
lord Liverpool, and myself, were in the habit of visiting him. I re- 
member him with pleasure as a very instructive and agreeable com- 
panion. He is at present archdeacon of Lincoln, and has been long dis- 
tinguished for the active and zealous discharge of the arduous duties of 
his profession, and station in the church. This club, in which were 
heard the first speeches ever composed or delivered by lord Liverpool 



202 OXFORD. [notes. 

and Mr. Canning, met every Thursday evening at the rooms of the 
members, who were at its first establishment limited to the number of 
six. Before our separation at night, or frequently at one or two o'clock 
in the morning, we voted and recorded the question which we were to 
debate on the ensuing Thursday. Sometimes we appeared at dinner in 
the hall, dressed in our uniform, which was a brown coat, of rather an 
uncommon shade, with velvet cuffs and collar. The buttons bore the 
initials of Demosthenes, Cicero, Pitt, and Fox. 

" Thus habited, and much the object of notice to every passing observer, 
we pleased ourselves with the excessive curiosity which our dress excited. 
As secret were we as the grave on all that concerned our oratorical insti- 
tution, and it would be difficult to give an idea of the anxiety evinced 
by our fellow collegians, to discover the meaning of this brown coat and 
velvet cuffs. 

" These indeed were boyish feelings, nor should I have entered so 
much into the particulars, were it not that, whether the questions de- 
bated by us were trivial or profound, this club cannot remain in obscu- 
rity, since it is the leading subject of Mr. Canning's letter, to which these 
remarks are introductory. Those who have been educated at public 
schools, which are the world in miniature, must have observed that 
boys are apt to exhibit themselves there very much in the same charac- 
ters which they afterwards maintain on the more important theatre of 
life. 

" I was the lowest boy in the list at Harrow, when I first went to that 
school, the only one at which I ever was placed ; and having gradually 
ascended to the highest forms, many are the instances I could recollect 
in support of this observation. No example, however, of an early and 
decisive display of character could be more peculiarly striking than that 
which is exhibited in Mr. Canning's letter. Dr. Cyril Jackson, at that 
time dean of Christ Church, entertained the most favourable opinion of 
Mr. Canning's abilities, and foresaw his high destiny in those glances 
into futurity, in which the dean was accustomed to indulge his contemp- 
lative and deeply penetrating mind, and frequently with an accuracy 
which was extraordinary : he had probably seated Mr. Canning on the 
woolsack. 

" There was one member of our club at Christ Church, lord Liverpool, 



part i.] OXFORD. 203 

whom it would be unbecoming in me to pass over without a more particu- 
lar notice. When at the university, he was not only a first-rate scholar, 
but he had confessedly acquired a greater share of general knowledge 
than perhaps any undergraduate of that day. He was an excellent his- 
torian, and his attention had been directed so early by his father to the 
contending interests of the European nations, that intricate political 
questions were already familiar to his mind. Lord Liverpool's public 
career is now, alas ! consummated. We have a complete view, and the 
world is able to make a full estimate of his transcendent abilities. 
These, we know, were extensively operative in the conduct of the last 
war, which was brought to its glorious termination by the prowess of 
our British hero, whose mode of warfare was marked in its superiority 
by so much of genius, that had his Grace continued to range his forces, 
from the year 1815, to the present hour, against the most celebrated 
captains in Europe, there is a moral certainty, or, to say the least, a 
strong conviction in those who had the best means of appreciating his 
talents in the East Indies, in the Peninsula, and in Flanders, that a 
succession of battles would have been to the duke of Wellington a suc- 
cession of victories. To return to lord Liverpool. After dedicating 
himself for nearly forty years to the service of his king and country, his 
merit is universally acknowledged, and never did any man go through a 
long and arduous life less reproached, or more irreproachable. His tem- 
per was extremely conciliating, and all who reflect On the trying scenes 
in which he bore a distinguished part, and are happy enough to recol- 
lect the benignity of his personal intercourse, will feel the truth, and 
even the moderation, of this friendly testimony to his virtues. There 
was, perhaps, in all England but one individual who was formed to 
compete successfully with lord Liverpool, at that inexperienced age of 
academic life of which we have been speaking, and that was George 
Canning. He accidentally entered at Oxford about the same time with 
lord Liverpool. The vivacity of Mr. Canning's conversation was inva- 
luable to those of his fellow-collegians who enjoyed his intimacy. It 
sweetened the severity of our studies, just as the sallies of his vigorous 
imagination have since delighted the house of commons, and cheered 
their midnight hours." 



204 OXFORD. [notes. 

"Brighton, Sept. the 1st, 1788. 
" My dear Newtox, 

" That the idleness of a long vacation should not have afforded you an 
answer to your two very deserving letters before this, to a mere con- 
templater of events/might perhaps seem extraordinary ; but to a philoso- 
pher, who is well convinced of the truth of the observation, that ' we 
are never more taken up than when we have nothing to do,' there 
will not be much room for surprise. Believe me, however, that I feel 
myself very highly, very sincerely, obliged by your punctual performance 
of your kind promise ; and that absence has not in the smallest degree 
weakened the desire I have always felt of proWng to you in how high 
esteem I hold you, and how great a value I set upon your friendship. 
You will be a good deal surprised at the answer which your questions re- 
lative to our club will receive. That club, Newton, is no more. ' And 
what dread event ? what sacrilegious hand ?' you will exclaim. New- 
ton, Mine. My reasons I never gave to any of the members, but I will 
open them to you. What my reasons for first becoming a part of the 
institution were, I protest I cannot at present call to mind. Perhaps I 
was influenced by the novelty of the plan, perhaps influenced by your 
example ; perhaps I was not quite without an idea of trying my strength 
with Jenkinson. Connected with men of avowed enmity in the politi- 
cal world, professing opposite principles, and looking forward to some 
distant period when we might be ranged against each other on a larger 
field, we were perhaps neither of us without the vanity of wishing to ob- 
tain an early ascendency over the other. 



" So long as the purport and usage of the club were a secret, I was very 
well contented to be of it ; but when it became notoriously known ; 
when the dean to me, (and to me only,) in private, recommended some 
reasons against its propriety, to my serious consideration — (for had he 
presumed to interpose authoritatively, that single circumstance, ' albeit 
considerations infinite did make against it,' would have been sufficient 
to determine me upon its continuance,) — when he represented it to me 



part i.] OXFORD. 205 

in a very strong light, as being almost an absolute avowal of parliament- 
ary views ; — to a professional man an avowal the most dangerous ; — 
this representation made me resolve to abandon an undertaking which I 
saw evidently could neither promise eventual advantage, nor maintain a 
temporary respectability. Thus resolved, at my return after the Easter 
vacation, without any previous confidential communication of my rea- 
sons, or my intentions, I sent my resignation by lord Henry on the first 
night of their meeting. William Spencer was now come, and was that 
night to take his seat. The message which lord Henry brought, occa- 
sioned, as it were, a combustion, which ended in the moving of some 
very violent resolutions. Among others, I was summoned to the bar ; 
of course, refused to obey the summons. A deputation was then sent to 
interrogate me respecting the causes of my resignation, which of course 
I refused to reveal ; and they were at last satisfied by my declaring 
that the reasons of my resignation did not affect them collectively or in- 
dividually. I of course was anxious that every body should know that 
I was no longer a member of the club ; and therefore, whenever it was 
a subject of conversation, disavowed any connection with it. Lord 
Henry I with much difficulty prevented from resigning at the same 
time that I did. He, however, attended but two more debates, and 
then formally ' accepted the Chiltern hundreds,' to use a parliamentary 
phrase. They now all unanimously gave out that there had been a 
complete dissolution, and that the thing was no longer in existence; 
altered their times and modes of meeting, abolished the uniform, and 
suspended their assemblies for a time. This, it seems, was intended 
to punish me, by carrying the face of a common, and not a particular 
secession. It was not long, however, before the truth came out, and 
their nightly debates are again renewed, not undiscovered, but with less 
pomp, regularity, numbers, and vociferation. This, then, is a full and 
true account of the decline and fall, and of the revival also, of the so- 
ciety. I do not think you can blame my conduct, when you recollect 
that the imputation of parliamentary prospects, already too much fixed 
on me, is what, of all others, a person in my situation ought to avoid. 
I am already, God knows, too much inclined, both by my own sanguine 
wishes and the connections with whom I am most intimate, and whom 



206 OXFORD. [notes. 

I above all others revere, to aim at the house of commons, as the only 
path to the only desirable thing in this world, the gratification of ambi- 
tion ; while at the same time every tie of common sense, of fortune, and 
of duties, draws me to the study of a profession. The former propen- 
sity I hope reflection, necessity, and the friendly advice and very marked 
attentions of the Dean will enable me to overcome ; and to the law I 
look, as the profession which, in this country, holds out every enticement 
that can nerve the exertions and give vigour to the powers of a young 
man. The way indeed is long, toilsome, and rugged ; but it leads to 
honours solid and lasting ; to independence, without which no blessings 
of fortune, however profuse, no distinctions of station, however splendid, 
can afford a liberal mind true satisfaction ; to power, for which no task 
can be too hard, no labours too trying. I look round the world, and 
even in the comparatively confined circle of my own acquaintance, I see 
an infinite number starting forward to the same goal ; all fired with the 
same hopes, and animated with a like ardour. That your health may 
permit you to join us in our career ; that the elasticity of your mind 
may spring from under that habitual indolence (pardon me for speaking 
in such a term) of philosophic pursuits, is very much my wish ; though 
with your heart and your intentions I do not doubt but you may be em- 
ployed with equal and perhaps better founded satisfaction to yourself, 
and with benefits to mankind, more real and more widely diffused, by 
putting into execution, where you have the will and the power, those 
systems, which I have often admired you for forming, of useful benefi- 
cence and practical Christianity. Theories are easily formed, and plans 
easily laid down for the cultivation of the human mind, for the cure of 
those evils incident to a state of perpetual subjection, and the diffusion 
of those blessings of which every state is capable. Be it your work, as 
far as lies within the circle of your influence, to give life to the inactivity 
of philosophy, and energy and efficience to the idleness of speculation. 
I am much pleased with the idea of seeing you in England; for if 
in England you are, I trust you will not leave it without seeing me. 
The return you mention to me with you is a pleasing fairy scheme, 
but which, then at least, will not be put in execution. My plans for 
next summer are fixed, and I think will be improving and agreeable. 



part i.] OXFORD. 207 

You may know that I am shamefully ignorant of French, and though 
I have fifty times formed the intention of learning it, I never yet 
have brought my intention to the maturity of practical application. By 
this time twelvemonth, I intend to procure a smattering sufficient to 
call a coach, or swear at a waiter ; and then to put in execution a 
plan formed long ago, in happier days, of going abroad with my three 
feUow scribes, the Microcosmopolitans. One of them you know, and ad- 
mire ; the other two, though not equal to him in abilities, are not behind 
him in qualities to conciliate affection and secure esteem. Our idea is not 
that of scampering through France and ranting in Paris ; but a sober 
sort of thing, to go and settle for two months in some provincial town, 
remarkable for the salubrity of its climate, the respectability of its inha- 
bitants, and the purity of its language ; there to improve our constitu- 
tions by the first ; to extend our acquaintance with men and manners by 
the second ; and to qualify ourselves for a further extension of it by per- 
fecting ourselves in the third. I have taken it into my head that I shall 
receive ***** into favour again. The truth about him is, that he is 
not without good points; his heart has some worth, his abilities very con- 
siderable eminence. 



" His character is far above that most nauseous of all things, insipidity, 
and negative good or evil. As a competitor he was troublesome and 
worth crushing ; but that once done, and I can assure you it cost me 
some pains to accomplish it, ' his good now blazes ; all his bad is in the 
grave,' as Zanga says. W. S. has again left Oxford, and I fancy for 
ever. He is, I hear, gone abroad ; but whither I know not. Pity that 
such abilities so great should be rendered useless to himself, and to so- 
ciety, by such an eccentricity of temper, and unaccountableness of beha- 
viour, as characterize him. 

" Lord have mercy upon you, who have in addition to the natural heat 
of the climate, such a letter as this to labour through ! Grant you pa- 
tience, good Heaven ! with eyes to make out my scrawl ; perseverance to 
unravel my meaning ; comprehension to understand my allusions ; good 



208 OXFORD. [notes. 

nature to be interested in my narrative ; a heart to profit by my instruc- 
tions ; and, moreover, to believe me, 

with very great truth 

and affection, your's, 
" My direction is Oxford, of course." G. CANNING." 

D'Alembert, in his Eloge de Montesquieu, has the following pas- 
sage, which appears so happily fraught with the social traits of Canning's 
character, that they may be quoted here without intrusion. 

" H 6toit, dans le commerce, d'une douceur et d'une gaito Sa con- 
versation etoit legere, agitable, et instructive, par le grand nombre 
d'hommes et de peuples qu'il avoit connus : elle etoit coupee, comme son 
style, pleine de sel et de sailhes, sans amertume.. . .Le feude son esprit, le 
grand nombre d'idees dont il etoit plein, les faisoient naitre. II 6toit 
sensible a. la gloire ; mais il ne vouloit y parvenir qu'en la m^ritant. Ja- 
mais il n'a cherche' a augmenter la sienne par ces manoeuvres sourdes, 
par ces voies obscures et honteuses, qui d^shonorent la personne, sans 
ajouter au nom." 

Note &, p. 65. 

Denham became gentleman commoner at Trinity in Michaelmas term, 
1631, in the sixteenth year of his age. Anthony Wood, in the delight- 
ful quaintness of his usual style, observes, — " Being looked upon as a 
slow and dreaming young man by his seniors and contemporaries, they 
could never then in the least imagine that he could ever enrich the world 

with his fancy, or issue of his brain, as he afterwards did Cooper's 

Hill: a Poem, Oxon, 1643, in one sheet and an half in quarto. A 
poem it is, which for the majesty of the style is, and ever will be, the 
exact standard of good writing. It was translated into Latin verse by 
Moses Pengrey, as I shall elsewhere tell you." 

Of Denham's person, Aubrey gives the following account : " Den- 
ham was of the tallest, but a little incurvetting at the shoulders, not very 
robust. His haire was but thin and flaxen, with a moist curie. His 
gate was slow, and was rather a stalking, (he had long legges,) which 
was wont to put me in mind of Horace, de Art. Poet. 



part i.] OXFORD. 209 

Hie, dum sublimes versus ructatur, et errat, 
Si veluti merulis intentus decidit auceps 
In puteum foveamque ; 

His eie was a kind of light goose-gray, not big, but it had a kind of 
strange piercingness, not as to shining and glory, but (like a Momus) 
when he conversed with you he look't into your veiy thoughts." 



Note b, p. 65. 

" William Pitt was born November 15, 1708, and educated at Eton ; 
whence, in January 1726, he went as a gentleman commoner to Trinity 
college. When he quitted the university, Pitt was for a time in the 
army, and served as a cornet ; but he quitted the life of a soldier for that 
of a statesman, and became member for the borough of Old Sarum, in 
February, 1735." — {Alex. Chalmers.) 

Note c, p. 65. 

" Thomas Warton became a scholar of Trinity in 1743, where in 1750 
he took his master's degree, and the next year succeeded to a fellowship. 
In 1785 he was chosen Camden Professor of History. His Triumph 
of Isis, written as a reply to Mason's Isis, contains a spirited invocation 
to his beloved Alma Mater :" 

Hail, Oxford, hail ! of all that's good and great, 

Of all that's fair, the guardian and the seat ; 

Nurse of each brave pursuit, each gen'rous aim, 

By truth exalted to the throne of fame ! 

Like Greece in science and in liberty, 

As Athens learned, as Lacedsemon free ! 

Note d, p. 66. 

No living writer must have a memory more delightfully stored with 
recollections of the past, than Lisle Bowles. From youth to old age, as- 
sociating with the learned, the good, and the great of his country, de- 
voted to literature, poetry, and criticism, and finally reposing in the calm 
t 3 



210 OXFORD. [notes. 

seclusion of pastoral life, — to few is it permitted to say with greater truth, 
" Innocuas amo delicias, doctamque quietem." This quotation may be 
appropriately followed by his own beautiful sentence, in the Life of Kenn, 

which he has lately published The contrast between the domestic quiet 

of Isaak Walton's home, and the puritanic broils of the day, he compares 
to "passing through the tumult and din of the crowd at Hyde Park 
corner to Holland house, the seat of poetry and kindred taste, where, 
opening the garden door, in contrast to the noise through which you 
have passed, you hear only with intense delight the ancient pines mur- 
muring in the still repose of a summer evening, and the nightingales con- 
tending in their solitary harmony." 



Note e, p. 67- 

It must be no slight gratification to Lisle Bowles, that Coleridge (see 
his Biog. Lit.) has recorded the inspiration his youthful mind caught 
from the perusal of some early sonnets by the reverend poet, The pure, 
the gentle, and the pathetic, abound in his poetry; and to no ear is 
" the dream of a village chime" more harmonious than his own. In his 
history of Bremhill, he gives an interesting account of church bells. 
"Bells, it has been said, were a late introduction into the Christian 
church ; but respecting the common idea of their being introduced by 
Paulinus, bishop of Nola, in Campania, (from whence the words Noll 
and Campana,) it is not entitled, I imagine, to much credit ; nor can it be 
admitted that their introduction was of a very late period, when bap- 
tizing them was so frequent in the eighth century, that Charlemagne, by 
a public ordinance forbid — ' ne clocos baptisent.' In Alet's ritual, the 
various mysterious applications to which they gave rise are minutely re- 
corded. Their early introduction may be inferred from one circum- 
stance. Epiphanius, describing the Gnostic heresy, speaks expressly of 
the powers and princes of the air. Now, in the Roman church, one mys- 
tical use of bells was to keep ' these demoniacal powers of the air at a 
distance !' The ceremony of papal benediction is very curious. Holy 
water, salt, oil, incense, cotton, myrrh, and a crumb of bread, are pre- 
pared ; a procession is then made from the vestry, and the priest, in- 



part i.] OXFORD. 211 

structing the people in the holiness of the art he is going to perform, 
sings a Miserere, blessing the holy water, &c. &c. After many cere- 
monies the bell-baptism is performed, by the finger dipt in oil, and the 
sign of the cross being made on its middle : it is then perfumed with in- 
cense, and another prayer to the Holy Spirit is read." 



Note f, p. 73. 

Combe Longa is in the patronage of Lincoln college. The curacy is 
held by the Rev. Charles Rose, B. D. fellow and tutor of Lincoln, whose 
delightful cottage residence adjoins the church. 

Note s, p. 74. 

John Evelyn became gentleman commoner of Balliol college in January 
1637- By his interest, lord Howard's ancient Marbles, the Arundeliana 
Marmora, were, in 1 667, presented to Oxford, for which he received the 
"solemn thanks" of the university, and (1669) the degree of D. C. L. 
The famous old annalist thus sums up his character. " This Mr. Evelyn 
is an ingenious and polite person, and, most of all, affects a private and 
studious life ; and was the first of those gentlemen who earliest met for 
the promotion and establishment of the Royal Society." 

Note h, p. 75. 

The following is the narrative of Foxe, in the third volume of his Ec- 
clesiastical History, respecting 

" The behaviour of Dr. Ridley (bishop of London) and Master Latimer 
(bishop of Worcester) at the time of their death, which was the 16th of 
October, 1555. 

u Upon the north side of the town (of Oxford) in the ditch ov3ragainst 
Balliol College, the place of execution was appointed ; and for fear of any 
tumult that might arise to hinder the burning of them, the Lord Wil- 
liams (of Thame) was commanded by the queen's letters, and the house- 
holders of the city to be there assisting, sufficiently provided with guards ; 



212 OXFORD. [notes. 

and when every thing was in readiness, the prisoners were brought forth 
by the mayor and bailiffs. 

" Master Ridley had a fair black gown, furred, and faced with foins 
(fur of the ferret) such as he was wont to wear, being bishop, and a 
tippet of velvet furred likewise about his neck, a velvet nightcap upon 
his head, and a corner cap upon the same, going in a pair of slippers to 
the stake, and going between the mayor and an alderman, &c. 

" After him came Master Latimer, in a poor Bristol frieze (coarse 
woollen) frock, all worn ; with his buttoned cap, and a kerchief on his 
head, all ready for the fire ; a new long shrowd hanging over his hose, 
down to the feet ; which at first stirred men's hearts to rue upon them, 
(to repent of seeing them so, to be much concerned for them, or to pity 
them,) beholding on the one side the honour they sometime had ; on the 
other, the calamity whereinto they were fallen. 

" Master Dr. Ridley, as he passed (from the mayor's house where he 
had lodged) toward Bocardo, (a gateway of the city and a prison, over 
the street opposite to where now stands the Three Goafs Inn,) looked up 
where Master Cranmer (archbishop of Canterbury) did He, hoping be- 
like to have seen him at the glass window, and to have spoken unto 
him. But then Master Cranmer was busy with friar Soto, and his fel- 
lows, disputing together, so that he could not see him through that occa- 
sion. Then Master Ridley looking back, espied Master Latimer coming 
after ; unto whom he said, ' Oh, be ye there ?' ' Yea,' said Master Lati- 
mer, ' have after as fast as I can follow.' So he, following a pretty way 
off, at length they came both to the stake, the one after the other ; where 
first Dr. Ridley entering the place, marvellously earnestly holding up both 
his hands, looked towards heaven ; then shortly after, espying Master La- 
timer, with a wondrous cheerful look, he ran to him, embraced and 
kissed him, and as they that stood near reported, comforted him, saying, 
' Be of good heart, brother ; for God will either assuage the fury of the 
flame, or else strengthen us to abide it.' 

" Then the smith took a chain of iron, and brought the same about both 
Dr. Ridley's and Master Latimer's middles ; and as he was knocking in 
a staple, Dr. Ridley took the chain in his hand, and shaked the same, 
for it did gird in his belly, and looking aside to the smith, said, ' Good 



parti.] OXFORD. 213 

fellow, knock it in hard, for the flesh will have its course.' Then his 
brother did bring him gunpowder in a bag, and would have tied the same 
about his neck. Master Ridley asked what it was. His brother said, 
' Gunpowder.' ' Then,' said he, ' I will take it to be sent of God, there- 
fore I will receive it as sent of him. And have you any,' said he, ' for 
my brother ?' meaning Master Latimer. ' Yea, sir, that I have,' quoth 
his brother ; ' Then give it unto him,' said he, ' betime, lest ye come too 
late.' So his brother went and carried of the same gunpowder unto 
Master Latimer. 

" Then they brought a faggot, kindled with fire, and laid the same 
down at Dr. Ridley's feet. To whom Master Latimer spake in this 
manner : < Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man ; we 
shall this day light such a candle by God's grace in England, as I trust 
shall never be put out.' 

"And so the fire being given unto them, when Dr. Ridley saw the fire 
flaming up towards him, he cried with a wonderful loud voice, ' In manus 
tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum : Domine, recipe spiritum 
meum :' and after repeating this latter part often in English, ' Lord, 
Lord, receive my spirit.' Master Latimer crying as vehemently on the 
other side : ' Oh, Father of heaven, receive my soul :' who received 
the flame, as it were embracing of it. After that he had stroked his face 
with his hands, and, as it were, bathed them a little in the fire, he soon 
died, as it appeareth, with very little pain, or none. And thus much 
concerning the end of this old and blessed servant of God, Master Latimer ; 
for whose laborious travels, fruitful life, and constant death, the whole 
realm hath cause to give great thanks to Almighty God. 

" But Master Ridley, by reason of the evil making of the fire unto 
him, because the wooden faggots were laid about the goss (furze), and 
over high built, the fire burned first underneath, being kept down by the 
wood. Which when he felt, he desired them for Christ's sake to let the 
fire come unto him, which when his brother-in-law heard, but not well 
understood, intending to rid him out of his pains, (for the which cause 
he gave attendance,) as one in such sorrow, not well advised what he did, 
heaped faggots upon him, so that he clean covered him, which made the 
fire more vehement beneath, that it burned clean all his nether parts be- 



214 OXFORD. [notes. 

fore it once touched the upper ; and that made him leap up and down 
under the faggots, and often desire them to let the fire come unto him, 
saying, ' I cannot burn ;' which indeed appeared well : for after his legs 
were consumed by reason of his struggling through the pain, (whereof 
he had no release, but only his contentation in God,) he shewed that side 
towards us, clean, shirt and all untouched with flame. Yet in all this 
torment he forgot not to call unto God, still having in his mouth, ' Lord, 
have mercy upon me :' intermingling his cry, ' Let the fire come unto 
me, I cannot burn.' In which pains he laboured, till one of the standers- 
by with his bill pulled off the faggots above, and where he saw the fire 
flame up, he wrested himself unto that side. And when the flame 
touched the gunpowder, he was seen to stir no more ; but burned on the 
other side, falling down at Master Latimer's feet." 



Note i, p. 75. 

In 1792, Southey became a student at Balliol : his political enthu- 
siasm at this period has never been forgotten by his opponents. Yet, 
how happy may that man be deemed, whose retrospections discover no 
greater crime than a change of political principle ! " The faults of great 
men are the consolation of dunces," — a sentiment too often verified by 
Southey's foes. The late William Hazlitt has attempted a mental 
portrait of this distinguished writer, in his Spirits of the Age; and a 
more curious specimen of bigotry, admiration, dislike, truth, and false- 
hood, as employed by one man in analyzing the merits of another, was 
never perhaps exhibited, than in his critical developement of Southey's 
character. 

Since the above remarks were written, Hazlitt is no more : " we could 
well have spared a better man." The obscure way in which he was car- 
ried to his last home was a melancholy comment on an unhappy life. 
There are those who think Voltaire's sarcasm on Dante not inap- 
plicate to Hazlitt, " his reputation will now be growing greater and 
greater, because there is now nobody who reads him," and others who 
estimate him in a nobler way, and think that, as Napoleon with his code 
in his hand, so Hazlitt with his life of that magnificent despot, w r ill go 



part i.] OXFORD. 215 

down to posterity ! Whatever may be said of his biography, none will 
deny the freshness, originality, and delightfulness, which often pervade his 
essays. With much wordy paradox, enormous conceit, and ineradicable 
bigotry, they reveal an intense love of the beautiful in the outward 
world, with an acute sympathy for all the mental workings of mind 
within. Party and politics were his ruin ; they tainted the pureness of 
his thoughts, distorted his views, and made him believe himself a phi- 
lanthropist, when most he became a bigot. To the oblique influence of 
politics, the constitutional infirmity of a bad temper must be added, and 
from these we may explain the unhealthy atmosphere in which his mind 
appears to have lived and breathed. To define Hazlitt's rank in cotempo- 
rary literature is almost impossible ; " Two voices are there ;" the 
one, denying him all that learning can respect, or virtue admire; 
the other, a clamorous appeal for undying fame. Time, the " beau- 
tifier of the dead," will be Hazlitt's best historian. If he has been the 
mere effervescence of a frothy age, he will be forgotten : if, on the contrary, 
he has strengthened the cause he affected to adore, there will be after- 
memories to brighten round his fame, while 



mgs 

From the Castalian fountain of the heart, 
The poetry of life, and all that art 
Divine of words, quickening insensate things. (Wordsworth.) 



Note k, p . 88. 

The early poets are allowed to be the most original : but whilst we ad- 
mire the freshness with which their poetry is imbued, we must remember 
that the refinements of life have multiplied since their day, and conse- 
quently, that what was then a single feeling, is now divided into a thousand 
shadowy modifications, too delicate for the sympathies of olden time to 
create. May we not therefore, in some measure, console ourselves for 
absence of originality, by the fascinations which refined sentiment has 
produced ? It is to these that modern times are indebted for a galaxy of 
female writers — stars that never shone upon the ancient world. The so- 
cial ascendency of Woman has advanced with the progress of Christianity; 



216 OXFORD. [notes. 

and truly, when we compare the spirit of modern, with ancient gallantry, 
we need not blush for the comparison. To the grossness of mere animal 
passion has succeeded an etheriality of sentiment, which, however per- 
verted by sophism, or degraded by affectation, has, on the whole, exer- 
cised a purifying influence over modern life. 

An ethical writer remarks, " The respect he feels for the virtues of 
woman may thus be considered almost as a test of the virtues of man." 
Judged by such a test, it is to be feared that both ancient and modern 
poets do not always appear to bright advantage. Amid a profusion of 
stately compliments and poetical gallantries, they have from time to time 
been most uncourteously inspired. Two lords of Grecian tragedy, iEschylus 
and Euripides, have profaned their dramas by some ugly passages which 
might well have been omitted. Mrs. yEschylus was evidently a virago, 
and the unmusical echoes of her voice must have murmured in her hus- 
band's ears, when he composed some lines in the Agamemnon and 
the Septem : both the Mistresses Euripides were awfully addicted to 
flirtation, and hence the exaggerated vileness of female character in the 
Medea and Hippolytus. 

There are thousands who admire Horace's poetical style of love, and 
echo his bacchanalian sentiments on women. Others rejoice to feel them- 
selves not amongst them. Horace, though a splendid lyrist, was a great 
sensualist, and, unlike Anacreon, has not always been very tasteful in his 
erotic allusions. A woman and a mistress are synonymous meanings in 
his poems ; and whenever the " molle calenum" affected his head, the 
" dulcium Mater saeva cupidinum" (lib. IV. ode 1.) invariably poDuted 
his heart. 

No man of humane disposition would willingly annihilate the Sabine 
bard ! but the truth must not be concealed, — he has fulminated many of- 
fensive remarks against old ladies, which have not been duly considered 
by those commentators who have indulged their tediousness in illustrat- 
ing his style and meaning. That the ancient matrons of Rome were not 
so attractive as the mild old ladies in unassuming caps of the present day, 
it is easy to imagine. But there are some elementary principles, from 
which we may form a judgment of a man's character in all ages and 
under all circumstances ; it is to be regretted, therefore, that Horace has 



part i.] OXFORD. 217 

not evinced a proper respect for the venerable glory of a grey head. A 
wrinkle is anathematized as if it were an infamous defect, and a dim eye 
pronounced an odious mockery of nature. " May you live to be an old 
woman !" appears to have been his poetical curse towards offending 
damsels ; and truly, if it were always fulfilled after his fashion, they 
must have become as luxuriantly ugly as his fertile fancy could have 
desired. 

If we might venture to account for this unamiable obliquity in 
Horace's poetical creed, we should, in some manner, refer it to the volup- 
tuous example of his patron Mecsenas. From the first time we read this 
person's name, to the present hour, a suspicion has haunted us, that he 
is indebted for his intellectual fame rather to the inflated adulation of 
poets, than to the substantial truth of real character. Seneca has sa- 
tirized his effeminacies ; and if our memory do not fail us, Gibbon has 
ventured some observations which tend to demolish his mountain of 
greatness. In all probability, he was the Bufo of his day, who gave 
good dinners, and therefore commanded the attendance of good poets to 
eat them. 

Proud as Apollo on his forked hill, 
Sat full-blown Bufo, puff'd by every quill : 
Fed with soft dedication all day long, 
Horace and he went hand and hand in song. 

We pass by the puny sarcasms against women, sprinkled over the 
pages of Virgil, Ovid, Catullus, Tibullus, Propertius, and others, to ar- 
rive at that ultima Thule of ferocious invective — the sixth satire of Ju- 
venal. To us it appears neither more nor less than an obscene libel 
on human nature, utterly unworthy the high spirit which produced the 
third, tenth, and thirteenth satires, in the latter of which, the terrors of 
conscience are so sublimely depicted. That we may not be deemed ar- 
rogant in this opinion, we beg permission to quote the words of one who 
lived at a period of no outrageous delicacy. " This satire (sixth) is a 
bitter invective against the fair sex. 'Tis indeed a commonplace, from 
whence all the moderns have notoriously stolen their sharpest railleries. 
In his other satires, the poet has only glanced on some particular women, 



218 OXFORD. [notes. 

and generally scourged the men. But this he reserved wholly for the la- 
dies. How they offended him I know not : hut upon the whole matter, he 
is not to be excused for imputing to all, the vices of some few amongst 
them. Neither was it generously done of him, to attack the weakest as 
well as the fairest part of creation : neither do I know what moral he 
could reasonably draw from it. To bid us beware of their artifices is a 
kind of silent acknowledgment, that they have more wit than men : 
which turns the satire upon us, and particularly upon the poet, who 
thereby makes a compliment where he meant a libel." {TDryden ) 

Indeed so revolting a picture does this satire exhibit, that neither the 
world nor Juvenal's fame would suffer by its omission. It has all 
Swift's impurity, without any of his redeeming wit ; and, as a moral 
corrective, is utterly useless. We might as reasonably expect that health 
would be preserved by a nauseous exposition of every disease in the na- 
tional hospital, as hope that moral beauty would be protected by parading 
the vilest of our depravities before the public view. 

Maxima debetur puero reverentia. (XIV. 47.) 

How did Juvenal reconcile this noble sentiment with his own practice ? — 
The sentence may be profitably remembered by the instructors of youth 
in the present day. 

It would be somewhat interesting to select the principal allusions to 
female character from our English poets, and endeavour to prove, that 
in most cases they have been tinged by the circumstances of each par- 
ticular writer, whenever they tend to deterioration. In the present case, 
however, we can only presume on the reader's patience, by quoting a few. 
Let us begin with Cowley, termed by Johnson, " the last of the meta- 
physical race of poets." He has uttered but few direct impertinences 
against women, but the cold indelicacy of his style and the amorous ab- 
surdity of his sentiments almost amount to a want of gallantry. One 
can fancy mathematical Problems making love to each other, when we 
read the imaginary colloquies of Cowley and his mistress — He has com- 
pared her to every mystery above the earth, and every curiosity beneath 
the sun. — Let the reader enjoy the following morceaux — Here is a 
burning lover dried into Egyptian dust ! 



parti.] OXFORD. 219 

The fate of Egypt I sustain, 

And never feel the dew of rain 

From clouds which in the head appear ! — 

What a melancholy plight the lady alluded to in the following lines 
must have been in ; 

Her sacrifice is found without an heart, 
For the last tempest of my death 
Shall sigh out that too with my hreath ! 

" Once more upon the waters, yet once more." Confusion and fearful 
ruin are threatened : we should like to have seen his mistress perusing 
the passage below : — 

Woe to her stubborn heart, if once mine come 

Into the self same room ; 
'Twill tear and blow up all within, 
Like a grenado shot into a magazin ! ! — 

Mr. Gait's sublime description of Lord Byron's genius is in some 
measure applicable to Cowley ; — " a mystery, dressed in a winding- 
sheet, and crowned with a halo !" — 

Who has equalled the heaven-like purity of Milton's description ? 
— whether we approach the primeval loveliness of her, who 

down to the slender waist 

Her unadorned golden tresses wore, 

or the virgin majesty of that " aidless, innocent lady," whose voice 
came floating 

upon the wings 

Of silence through the empty- vaulted night, 
At ev'ry fall smoothing the raven down 
Of darkness, till it smil'd ! — 

Yet there are many ladies in the world who denounce Milton, and al- 
lude unhandsomely to his wife, when they read, that Eve was 

all but a rib 

Crooked by Nature, bent as now appears 
More to the part sinister, — 

and that Adam dared to ask 

u2 



220 OXFORD. [notes. 



i'hy did G od, 



Creator wise, that peopled highest heaven 
With spirits masculine, create at last 
This novelty on Earth, this fair defect 
Of nature, and not fill the world at once 
With men, as angels, without feminine > — 

We now arrive at the last of by-gone English poets from whose 
works we shall select instances of ungallant poetry — Alexander Pope. — 
Many bitter ironies against the " fair sex" occur in Pope's writings ; 
but the principal are contained in his celebrated " Epistle" on " the Cha- 
racters of Women," — a title, by the way, in queer opposition to a line 
in the Poem : 

Most women have no characters at all. — 

In allusion to this piece, Johnson remarks — " The Characters of 
Men" are written with more, if not with deeper thought. In the 
women's part are some defects ; the character of Atossa is not so neatly 
finished as that of Clodio ; and some of the female characters may be 
found perhaps more frequently among men ; what was said of Philo- 
mede, was true of Prior — The sarcastic maxims which have offended 
the " ornaments of creation," are these : — viz. 

Woman and fool are two hard things to hit. 
In men, we various * ruling passions find ; 
In women, two almost divide the kind : 
Those, only fix'd, they first or last obey, — 
The love of pleasure, and the love of sway. 

And yet, believe me, good as well as ill, 
Woman's at best a contradiction still; 
Heaven, when it strives to polish all it can, 
Its last best work, but forms a softer man. 

We conclude with that pert blasphemy against the purity of woman, 
which has enjoyed immortality on the lips of coxcombs and seducers : 

Men — some to business, some to pleasure take, 
But every woman is at heart a rake. — 

* In his Essay on Man, he admits but one " ruling passion." 



part i.] OXFORD. 221 

These opinions are evidently imbued with sickliness and disappoint- 
ment ; and arose, perchance, from a slight on the part of Martha Blount ; 
or from the colloquial tartness of Lady Mary Wortley, who sadly dis- 
comfited our poet at the table of their mutual friend, Lady Oxford. 

C'est que I'enfant toujours est homme, 
C'est que l'homme est toujours enfant. 

Lord Byron's admirers will, perhaps, admit that the general spi- 
rit of his poetry does not tend to elevate the female character. In 
nearly all his heroines, there is a pervading glow of sentimental 
wantonness, which, however attractive in the page of poetry, is by 
no means desirable in the intercourse of human life. His lordship evi- 
dently considered woman in no spiritual light : this view, however, was 
the necessary result of that misanthropic egotism which forms the soul 
of his poetical system. To him the world revealed no prospect of gra- 
dual progression to a better and brighter state of things : — as it had 
ever been, so it would ever remain, — a blackened wilderness of selfish 
gloom. There are many who concur with him ; for, as Shelley says, 

Many heartless things are said and done, 
And many brutes and men live on. 

Yet are there, from time to time, glimpses of moral beauty and love- 
liness, and lofty energies, and high-born hopes, and human charities, 
to be enjoyed by all who live and breathe the healthful air of existence. 
Croly has concentrated in a few words, more than we have read else- 
where, in illustration of Lord Byron's mind : " His moral system as a 
poet is founded on the double error, that great crimes imply great quali- 
ties ; and, that virtue is a slavery. Both maxims palpably untrue ; for 
crime is so much within human means, that the most stupendous crime 
may be committed by the most abject of human beings ; while the man 
of the wildest license is only so much the more fettered and bowed down." 
This doctrine was anticipated nearly two thousand years ago, by one 
who is called a heathen, but whose moral sentiments are often purer 
than those of the nominal Christian : 

Nemo liber est, qui corpori servit. Senbc. Epist. 92. 

u3 



222 OXFORD. [notes. 

Those who think that, to assume a Cain-like attitude, and wrestle with 
the Deity in words of doubt and defiance, is freedom, — will deny the 
sentiment. Let us hope, however, that there are many who echo the 
words which Croly has breathed over the grave of Byron — " that living 
long enough for fame, he died too soon for his country." 

It was our intention to have concluded this long, and, we fear, in- 
trusive note, by a selection of passages relative to the minds and charac- 
ters of women, from the works of Southey, Wordsworth, and Wilson — 
they whose fame 

Must share in Nature's immortality, 
A venerable thing ! and so their song 
Should make all nature lovelier, and itself 
Be loved like nature ! Coleridge. 

Who teach us to 

recognise 

A grandeur in the beatings of the heart. 

Whose genius surrounds us with 

A presence that disturbs us with the joy 
Of elevated thoughts ; a sense sublime 
Of something far more deeply interfused, 
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
And the round ocean, and the living air, 
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man. 

And whose philosophy illustrates the sublime words of Rousseau : " Si 
l'Auteur de la nature est grand dans les grandes choses, il est tres-grand 
dans les petites." — But we will task the reader's kindness no further, 
but conclude with 

Thanks to the human heart by which we live, 
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears ; 
To me, the meanest flower that blows can give 
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears! — 



Note I, p. 93. 
During the last year, some twelve or fifteen periodicals, beginning at 



part i.] OXFORD. 223 

the unambitious price of twopence, in graceful ascent to the lofty height 
of six shillings, have edified the public, and amused themselves, by dis- 
charging critical thunder at the head of the unfortunate transgressor 
alluded to in our text. Now the first thing that must strike a reader in 
many of these reviews, is the sincerity of the writers : for who, when an 
author is glowingly depicted as " fool," and " ass," — " knave," and " hy- 
pocrite," — " numskull," and sundry other pretty characters, can doubt a 
critic's earnestness ? — A few fastidious people, here and there scattered 
over the literary globe, may, perchance, think these appellations a little 
uncourteous ; and others compare the critics to those " grotesque faces 
in a Gothic church, which grin, and frown, and make such horrible dis- 
tortions of visage, that you would think them the guardians of the whole 
building, whereas they are only excrescences that add nothing to its 
strength, but disfigure it by their deformity ;" — still, sincerity is a rare 
virtue, and ought to be admitted into the very best society, however 
rudely apparelled. 

To the noisy candour of this class of reviewers, succeeds the polite ma- 
lignancy of more graceful criticism. By means of this, an author's 
poetry is anatomised into prose, meaning screwed into nonsense, words 
distorted into trash, sentiments conjured into bombast, and the usual 
flippancies of "young gentleman," " bardling," " poetaster," &c. &c. are 
introduced with becoming effect. But as the subject, as well as the style, 
must be attacked, it is deemed proper to ruin the former, by blazoning 
forth the poetical impossibilities connected with it ; or else, by collecting- 
its various parts into one ludicrous assemblage, after the manner of an 
auctioneer's catalogue. It cannot however be forgotten, that now and 
then a word of comfort and a fine of eulogy escape the reviewer : but, 
ashamed of the weakness, he soon returns to a more pleasing task. 

There are others connected with this laudable undertaking, acting 
in the double character of author and critic. Without resorting to 
any ungenerous surmise, their hostility may thus be explained, — a 
writer who had pleased the many, could not of course delight " the 
few." Doubtless, these " few" are difficult personages to define, but 
as they are so frequently mentioned by their admirers, they must en- 
joy a respectable existence somewhere or other on the face of the eaith. 



224 OXFORD. [notes. 

Happy authors ! who, undegraded by a vulgar passion for present fame, 
fix their eyes on a bright futurity ; happy posterity ! that is destined 
to receive instruction which living times are unworthy to enjoy. Copies 
may remain in unsold obscurity on booksellers' shelves, and publishers' ac- 
compts prove inconvenient memorials ; but they have that within that 
passeth show. A few years hence, when the false idols of the day are dis- 
enthroned and forgotten, " the few" will swell into the many, and 
then shall editions do justice to their fame. Thus, under the weight of 
unpurchased volumes, are they enabled to feel " that a thousand years 
after their death, the Indian on the banks of the Ganges, and the Lap- 
lander on his hills of snow, will read then- works, and envy the happy 
clime that produced such extraordinary genius *." 

Amid such distressful circumstances, a writer endowed with true de- 
licacy would have faded into an elegant consumption, and died young, 
in order to be tenderly remembered. Such, however, was not the case : 
his health was audaciously good, and his pen as active as ever. To ex- 
plain this tough pertinacity, we must suppose him to have been some- 
what acquainted with the history of criticism, and to have found, that 
from the days when Gray's Elegy was pronounced a " respectable piece 
of mediocrity f," to the time when lord Byron was advised, "forthwith 
to abandon poetry X," and betake him to more profitable pursuits, similar 
afflictions had been constantly endured. Popularity was, — " vulgar 
fame ;" praise, — " ahsurd flattery ;" and religious feeling, — " mere cant" 
assumed for the occasion. Then, as now, did the great unknown 
lament the decline of taste, the dearth of genius, and the nothingness of 
public opinion ; while every author imprudent enough to succeed was 
described as the mere idol of the day, beneath the observation of the dis- 
cerning " few." 

May we not hope then, that those gentlemen whose pens are prepared 
to demolish the present unfortunate production, seeing that they have as 
yet produced nothing new in critical warfare, will devise some other 
means for effecting an honourable purpose ? For truly lamentable would 

* See Gibbon's Essay on Polite Literature. 
t See the London Magazine of that period. 
t Vide Edinburgh Review. 



fart i.] OXFORD. 225 

it be, if, after exhausting - such noble energies in the defence of true taste 
and feeling, a headstrong public should decide for itself ! Since mere 
critical blows, however violent and fierce, and constantly repeated, fail in 
effecting an author's annihilation, can they not contrive to invent a few 
immoralities, and philippize against the hypocrisy, cant, and deceitful- 
ness of the times ? Success appears to smile on this plan : since, what- 
ever may be the character of the critic himself, the morality of the author 
is indispensable. It is doubtless, on the truth of this sentiment, that se- 
veral religious periodicals have lately acted. Being a little puzzled with 
the muse, they sneer at her morality, and, according to the creed of their 
gospel, insinuate into the character of others, what piety never admits in 
their own. 

Let us conclude this discussion by a survey of the principal charges 
adduced against a writer, whose volumes have sold. First in the list 
of offences appears — a portrait without a neckcloth. Assuredly this 
is a melancholy affair, inasmuch as it no more resembles the au- 
thor, than it does the face of Ali Pasha ! And vanity, that fault which is 
only agreeable in ourselves, nothing but vanity, could have invented that 
upturned gaze ! — Here was a source of infinite martyrdom. One gentle- 
man, remarkable for Byronic deficiency of cravat, considered the portrait 
a rivalrous attempt ; while every reviewer who boasted an ugly face, 
thought it a personal satire. It is but fair, however, to add, that any 
gentleman who has the misfortune to possess a copy of this portrait, by 
sending it to Mr. Hobday, the artist, may have his money returned, or a 
neckcloth supplied. 

When we add to this circumstance, that the author " gives no dinners," 
writes no critiques, corresponds with no magazine, haunts no coteries, 
and, — owing to the study of astronomy in early youth, — holds his head 
very high when he walks, — together with the weakness of being rather 
young, — can we wonder that he has been lampooned in periodicals, or 
slandered in reviews * ? 

* Lord Byron was fearfully alive to the annoyances of petty reviewers. Indig- 
nant sarcasm against the meanest Dennis who invaded his poetical renown is con- 
tinually bursting forth in his correspondence. Speaking of critics, in one of his let- 
ters to Murray, he says, after forbidding him to forward any more of the reviews ; 



OXFORD. [notes. 



Note rn, p. 94. 

A few months since, an order issued from proprietary headquarters, 
for a certain young writer to be immolated in the next number of the 
venerable Blue and Yellow. In obedience to this command, several 
articles were prepared, aU of which finally yielded to the one that was in- 
serted, as combining a due quantity of venom, with affectionate candour 
towards an ill-used public. 

Majora canamus ; — let us with modest gaze approach the " bright 
excess" of this surpassing criticism. After a little uncomfortable wrig- 
gling, the reviewer works his way into the subject — Puffery. Here it 
is painful to add, that two or three pages are pilfered from The Puffiad*, 
without any acknowledgment of the offence. After this, follows a ver- 
bal analysis, rather clumsy, and by no means original. The plagiarisms 
are proved after the following learned manner : — a few lines, selected 
from various parts of the guilty production, are exhibited, in which the 
words, " ocean," " dew," &c. &c. occur ; some lines are also produced 
from Dryden and Lord Byeox, in which similar expressions occur. 
Now, what is plainer than that the former writer is convicted of pla- 

" These do not interrupt, but they soil the current of my mind. I am sensitive 
enough, but not until I am troubled." To this remark, Moore has appended a note, 
evidently emanating from the smart which critical malignance produces. " The 
petty but thwarting obstructions and distractions which are at present thrown 
across the path of men of real talent by that swarm of minor critics and pretenders, 
with whom the want of a seat in other professions has crowded all the walks in lite- 
rature." Nor is it only the writers of the day who suffer from this multifarious rush 
into the mart ; the readers also from having " the superficies of too many things pre- 
sented to them at once, come to lose by degrees their powers of discrimination ; and 
in the same manner, as the palate becomes confused in trying various wines, so the 
public taste declines in proportion as the impressions to which it is exposed mul- 
tiply." 

To such sentiments Bruyfire's remark applies. " Quand une lecture vous e'leve 
l'esprit, et qu'elle vous inspire des sentimens nobles, ne cherchez pas une autre regie 
pour juger de l'ouvrage ; il est bon et fait de l'ouvrage. La Critique, aprfes ca, peut 
s'exercer sur les petites choses, relever quelques expressions, corriger des phrases, 
parler de syutaxe," &c. &c. 

* A very unamiable production, concerning which, the papers maintained a most 
disinterested silence. 



parti.] OXFORD. 227 

giarism, since neither the ocean nor the dew was discerned, till Lord 
Byron and Drtden perceived them one day, and patronised them in 
their poems ? This spirited hunt after plagiarisms extends through seve- 
ral pages, when, with a gracious smile at his own performance, the re- 
viewer receives his pay, and bids us farewell. The hint to plagiarists, 
it is hoped, may prove serviceable ; the advice given by a respectable old 
lady to her bud of iniquity, in Paul Clifford, ought not to be for- 
gotten ; " Never steal, — 'specially when any body's nigh !" — Yet, may a 
question be put to this ingenious gentleman, — If all he pilfered from his 
predecessors, distilled from old magazines and encyclopaedias, gathered 
from indices, and squeezed from the book itself under review, were com- 
bined, — how much of any article that he has composed, may be called 
his own? — His critiques remind us of a circumstance in Armenia; — 
When a poor man appears with a new coat, he is suspected to have stolen 
it : — but if it be cleverly patched by contributions from old cloth, — it is 
supposed to be his own ! 

The reviewer had evidently seen better days ; though accustomed 
from the blushing dawn of his talents to perform the scrubwork of criti- 
cism, still he had occasionally spoken truth, and slept soundly after 
praising an author. Here, however, was a task of peculiar dirtiness 
which threatened to soil even his hands, all accustomed as they were to 
menial offices. He had to grope his way through sixteen pages of print, 
and better men than he might be forgiven, for not having accomplished 
this tiresome duty without some awkward grimaces on the road. 

The critic's favourite metaphor is " a Turkey carpet :" from this it may 
be concluded that he is an upholsterer, haunted by the dreams of a shop : 
not but that an upholsterer may be a very excellent personage, though 
seldom, perhaps, a good critic : unless indeed, after the manner of Ad- 
dison's trunk-maker, who, it is recorded, could knock down an ox, or 
write a comment on the Ars Poetica, with equal facility. 

The article was a decided failure ; there was of course a chuckle of 
delight among authorlings, and a yelp of applause from criticlings, — be- 
yond this, nothing was effected. The public has a good memory on 
these occasions ; and recollected that the same review, now employed in 
exposing the puff system, had from its infancy invariably puffed its own 



228 OXFORD. [notes. 

coterie, from the budding statesman, down to the full-blown versifier. It 
also appeared rather strange, that no proofs were produced to support an 
accusation ; and that those who were notoriously addicted to the para- 
graphic vice, were suffered to remain, " unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and un- 
known." 

On a primary view of the matter, this treatment on the part of the public, 
towards the patronising tenderness of a reviewer, may appear unmerited. 
But when we remember, that during the last fifteen years, there is not a 
solitary instance in which the Edinburgh Review has guided public taste 
in conferring eminence on a writer, — the matter is explained. With re- 
spect to poetry this is especially true. All who have won reputation, it 
has endeavoured either to blast in their path to fame, or allowed them 
to be unmentioned, till years had procured a popularity, which re- 
quired the aid of no reviewer to sustain it. Besides, there is a little im- 
policy in a critic's frontless assertion, — that the public is a mighty Ass, 
easily led by the nose, wherever the popular impulse of an hour may con- 
duct it. For who is it but this same stultified public that supports the 
very review that contemns it ? In this, the critic sees profound judg- 
ment and correct taste ; in every other respect, the judgment of the many 
is altogether vain — Admirable logic ! and urbane conclusion ! No doubt, 
some literary bubbles have been puffed into popular favour, and that 
poetical unworthiness has been occasionally overrated; a few months, 
however, have redeemed the truth, and conducted Taste to her legi- 
timate conclusions. He must therefore be a bigot of the very first 
water, and on tolerable good terms with himself, who condescends to pa- 
tronise the public, by assuming all judgment and taste, as the inherit- 
ance of his own brains ; while the many are catalogued as blockheads 
and dunces, never to be respected, — except when they believe an oracular 
review ! 

The reviewer is, we believe, still alive ; and from time to time employs 
himself in making mouths at distinguished men. His style is peculiarly 
his own. 

For Appius reddens at each word you speak, 
And stares tremendous with a threat'ning eye, 
Like some fierce tyrant in old tapestry. 



part i.] OXFORD. 229 

His darling topic is, the decline of poetry ; which means, that some 
little abortion of his own not having sold, as a matter of course, time 
poetry has ceased to exist. On this subject, he is known to crawl along 
in elegiac prose for several pages, till, suddenly pouncing on some hap- 
less author, he grins himself into critical ecstasy : — 

All books he reads, and all he reads assails, 
From Dryden's fables down to Uurfey's tales : 
With him most authors steal their works, or buy ; 
Garth did not write his own Dispensary. 

Let us, however, conclude this strange, eventful history ; and let us 
likewise imitate the critic's atoning kindness, by expressing our regret, 
should any of these remarks be "painful to his feelings." — Most heartily 
do we wish him a nobler office, than that of being the hired assassin of 
a bigoted review. 

Note n, p. 99. 

See anecdotes of Heber's early life, as recorded by his widow. 



Note °, p. 99. 

" I am much amused with the preparation I see making for furnishing 
me with household stuff, such as tablecloths, sheets, &c. ; it is surely a 
luxurious age when a boy of seventeen requires so much fuss to fit him 

out Sat de nugis, ad seria reverto. My studies go on as usual. Ma- 

chiavel I rather admire more than at first. My Greek studies wall be 
soon, I fear, gravelled, if I continue at home ; my brother particularly 
recommends me to attend to the public lectures on astronomy and mathe- 
matics at Oxford, as he says they are at present very clever." — Life, by 
Mrs. Heber, vol. I. p. 22—23. 



" Notwithstanding the miseries of Fellowships on which you descant, 
I should like very well to have one. I cannot indeed conceive how an 
excellent society, good rooms, and the finest situation for study in the 



230 OXFORD. [notes. 

world, can have that effect in benumbing the facilities which you ascribe 
to it. There will, no doubt, be many illiberal men in these sort of so- 
cieties ; but I fear those men would have been stiU less gentlemen than 
they are at present, had it not been for the advantages of a college so- 
ciety. I was much entertained, my dear friend, with the account you 
gave of time-passing at Cambridge. ' The beef of yesterday is succeeded 
by the mutton of to-day,' are your words, when you shew me the man- 
ner in which the Cantabs pass then time. You, indeed, who are clothed 
in purple, and fare sumptuously every day at the Fellows' table, would 
have more reason to reckon by meals than I should ; for the dinners we 
get here, at least the commoners, (for the gentlemen commoners have a 
table to themselves, and fare very well,) are the most beastly things that 
ever graced the table of a poor-house, or house of correction, (ohe !) I 
write this letter in a very ill-humour at some circumstances I happen to 
be engaged in, which are as follows : It is thought expedient that as I 
principally feel myself deficient in mathematics, I should stay in Oxford 
during this next vacation, in order to go through a course of lectures 
with the mathematical professor. This is certainly very much for a 
man's interest, but it will be very dull, I fear, as few Brasen Nose men 
with whom I am acquainted will stay. If you could contrive to take the 
opportunity of this vacation at once to see Oxford, and make an old 
school-fellow perfectly happy by your company for a day or two, I need 
not say how glad I should be. If you conveniently can, pray do come. 
Per hoc inane purpura decus precor. 

" I have fagged pretty hard since I have been here, on a perfectly dif- 
ferent plan, however, from my Neadson studies. I was very closely en- 
gaged last week with a copy of verses, as you will believe, when I tell 
you that I had literally no time to shave, insomuch that my beard was 
as long and hoary as that of the celebrated bearded king. I succeeded 
tolerably well in my verses, and had to read them in the hall, the most 
nervous ceremony I ever went through. 

" I agree with you on the subject of the fabled academical leisure. We 
are at Cambridge and Oxford, in the economy of time, perfect Cartesian ; 
we admit of no vacuum. I have been, through my Cheshire connections, 
and through the long residence of my brother, introduced to a great 



part i.] OXFORD. 231 

many people, and this has, of course, produced very numerous parties ; 
but, I assure you, I shall preserve my character for sobriety : no man is 
obliged to drink more than he pleases, nor have I seen any of that spirit 
of playing tricks on freshmen, which we are told were usual forty or 

fifty years ago at the universities Vale; si possis, veni. You seem not 

much to like the concerts at Cambridge ; I very much approve of ours 
here, both as it is a rational scholarlike amusement, and as it affords a 
retreat, if necessary, from the bottle." — Life, vol. I. p. 26 — 28. 

Heber's first university distinction was the prize for Latin verse, 
gained by his "Carmen Seculare." This was followed in 1803 by 
" Palestine," to which the following notices interestingly refer. 

" I know not whether I told you in my last it is a sort of prize extra- 
ordinary for English verses — the subject, Palestine. I was not aware 
till yesterday that the same subject had been some time since given for 
the Seatonian prize. I think it on the whole a fine one, as it will admit 
of much fancy, and many sublime ideas. I know not whether it ought 
to have been made exclusively sacred or not. Many men, whom I have 
talked with, seem inclined to have made it so ; but I have an utter dis- 
like to clothing sacred subjects in verse, unless it be done as nearly as 
possible in scriptural language, and introduced with great delicacy. I 
could not, however, refrain from mentioning and rather enlarging on the 
Messiah and the last triumphs of Judaea. The historical facts of scrip- 
ture, I of course made great use of, as well as of the crusades, siege of 
Acre, and other pieces of modern story. My brother, my tutor, and Mr. 
Walter Scott, the author of the ' Border Minstrels,' whom I have no 
doubt you know by name, if not personally, give me strong hopes ; and 
I am, on the other hand, I hope, pretty well prepared for a disappoint- 
ment, whether the event be favourable or otherwise : I shall know in 
about two days, and will not fail to communicate my victory or defeat." 
Life, vol. I. pp. 29, 30. 

" In the course of its composition, sir Walter Scott happened to break- 
fast with him one morning, together with his brother and one or two 
friends, previous to their joining a party of pleasure to Blenheim ; Pa- 
lestine became the subject of conversation, and the poem was produced 
and read. Sir Walter, to whom the editor is indebted for the anecdote, 
x2 



232 OXFORD. [notes. 

said, ' You have omitted one striking circumstance in your account of 
the building of the temple, that no tools were used in its erection.' Regi- 
nald retired from the breakfast-table to a corner of the room, and before 
the party separated, produced the beautiful lines which now form a part 
of the poem, and which were at a subsequent period, and alas ! on a far 
different occasion, quoted by sir Charles Edward Grey, as illustrative of 
the manner in which he trusted the church of Asia would arise, and in 
which the friend he then mourned was so admirably qualified to hasten 
its growth. On mounting the rostrum to recite his poem, Reginald 
Heber was struck by seeing two young ladies of Jewish extraction sit- 
ting in a conspicuous part of the theatre. The recollection of some lines * 
which reflect severely on their nation flashed across his mind, and he de- 
termined to spare their feelings by softening the passage, which he feared 
would give them pain, as he proceeded ; but it was impossible to commu- 
nicate this intention to his brother, who was sitting behind him as 
prompter, and who, in the attempt being made, immediately checked 
him, so that he was forced to recite the lines as they were originally 
written." — Life, pp. 30, 31. 

Note q, p. 100. 

An eloquent article on Heber's Hymns in Blackwood's Magazine, 
and, from the beautiful diction that pervades it, apparently written by 
Wilson, contains an affecting allusion to the recitation of Palestine. 

" None, who heard Reginald Heber recite his Palestine in that magni- 
ficent theatre, will ever forget his appearance, so interesting and im- 
pressive. It was known that his old father was somewhere sitting among 
the crowded audience, when his universally admired son ascended the 
rostrum ; and we have heard that the sudden thunder of applause that 

* Oh, lives there one who mocks his artless zeal ! 
Too proud to worship, and too wise to feel ? 
Be his the soul with wintry reason blest, 
The dull, lethargic sovereign of the breast ! 
Be his the life that creeps in dead repose, 
No joy that sparkles, and no tear that flows. 



parti.] OXFORD. 233 

then arose so shook his frame, weak and wasted by long illness, that he 
never recovered it, and may be said to have died of the joy dearest to a 
parent's heart. Reginald Heber's recitation, like that of all poets we 
have heard recite, was altogether untrammelled by the critical laws of 
elocution, which were not set at defiance, but either by the poet un- 
known, or forgotten ; and there was a charm in his somewhat melan- 
choly voice, that occasionally faltered, less from a feeling of solemnity, 
and even grandeur of the scene of which he was himself the conspicuous 
object, though that feeling did suffuse his pale and ingenuous counte- 
nance, — than from the deeply-felt sanctity of his subject, comprehending 
the most awful mysteries of God's revelations to man." 

A Magazine, 

" That grins immensely at its own sagacity," 
some time since informed its readers, that the present writer had "written 
for the Newdigate, and failed." It would be needless to contradict this, 
and similar atrocious absurdities, were there not an imbecile race in the 
world of letters always prompt to believe what is absurd, and to quote 
what is malicious. For their benefit, be it remarked, without the faint- 
est sneer at a poem which Heber consecrated, and Milman has adorned, 
that the glorious uncertainty of the " Newdigate" has not been en- 
dured by the present author ; nor is it probable that it ever will. 

In the course of this volume incidental allusions have been made to 
contemporary criticism : no candid reader will mistake or misapply 
them. It would be a censorious foppery for any man, whatever his rank 
in literature, to express unlimited contempt for an art in which many of 
the most accomplished and profound scholars of the day are engaged ; and 
laughable bigotry to deny the wit, eloquence, and brilliancy, from time to 
time exhibited in our modern reviews. But while he allows the excel- 
lencies of criticism, he cannot be blind to the theoretic dulness, flimsy sar- 
casm, and monotonous twaddle which distinguish a great part of it. Of late, 
a new class of critics has arisen, composed chiefly of bankrupt prosers, and 
miscellaneous rhymers, whom Pope has christened, " Grub-street poets run 
to seed *." At present, they are trying an experiment with public taste, — 

* Bad poets become malevolent critics, just as weak wine turns to vinegar. 
(Southey.) 

x3 



234 OXFORD. [notes. 

whether " criticism," diseased with prejudice, and bloated with vul- 
garity, will be popularly relished, and meet with success. Their whole 
power consists in noise and nonsense, and with these they make a most 
industrious rattle from week to week, and month to month. 

But let no reader consider these remarks as intended to excite in- 
dignation against a mournful race of men, who are too often compelled 
to eat the bread of infamy, and under the name of critics, unite the 
double character of poltroons and maligners. Rather let him change 
contempt into the more Christian feeling of pity. For are they not 
to be pitied, who are born — wretched — and die ? He may in- 
deed, on observing the swagger of their style, and the mock he- 
roism exhibited in their " defence of public taste," — imagine them to be 
the happiest fellows alive. Yet were he to single one out of the herd 
for minute observation, how often would he discover him to be a 
shrivelled unfortunate, gnawed by disappointment, or jaundiced by de- 
spair ! — one who has indeed been a writer of all work — the Helot of lite- 
rature. Tragedies that were never acted, poems that were never read, 
and novels that were never sold, are his to claim. He has murdered for 
morning papers, and set houses on fire for evening journals, and yet 
remains unknown. Amid such disasters, let a generous mind pause ere 
it condemn him, whom circumstances have twisted into a degenerate 
hireling. When the petty rivalries of the horn- are forgotten, and truth 
is alone remembered, the retrospections of such a character are by no 
means enviable. To him belongs not the smile of the good, nor the 
friendship of the great : as he has lived to be degraded, so will he die to 
be forgotten. 

be one poet's praise, 

That not in fancy's maze he wander'd long, 

But stoop'd to truth, and moralized his song : 

Laugh'd at the loss of friends he never had, 

The dull, the proud, the wicked, and the mad ; 

The tale revived, the lie so oft o'erthrown, 

Th' imputed trash, and dulness not his own. 

Note r, p. 102. 
" When Reginald Heber returned from the theatre, surrounded by his 



part i.] OXFORD. 235 

friends, with every hand stretched out to congratulate, and every voice 
raised to praise him, he withdrew from the circle ; and his mother, who, 
impatient of his absence, went to look for him, found him in his room 
on his knees, giving thanks to God, not so much for the talents which 
had, on that day, raised him to honour, but that those talents had en- 
abled him to bestow unmixed happiness on his parents." — Life, vol. I. 
p. 33. 

The following sketch of Heber by a contemporary, while residing in 
the university, after his poetical triumph, will be read with deep in- 
terest. 

" At a time, when with the enthusiasm of the place I had rather 
caught by heart than learnt Palestine, and when it was a privilege of 
any one of any age to know Heber, I had the delight of forming his ac- 
quaintance. I cannot forget the feeling of admiration, with which, in 
the autumn of 1803, I approached his presence, or the surprise with 
which I contrasted my abstract image of him with his own simple, 
social, every-day manner. He talked and laughed like those around him, 
and entered into the pleasures of the day with them, and with their 
relish ; but when any higher subject was introduced, (and he was never 
slow to introduce literature at least, and to draw from his exhaustless 
memory riches of every kind,) his manner became his own. He never 
looked up at his hearers, but with his eyes downcast and fixed poured 
forth in a measured intonation, which from him became fashionable, 
stores of every age ; the old romances ; Spencer ; some of our early prose 
writers ; of Scott's published works ; or verses of his own. I speak not 
of one day only, but of my general recollection of his habits as after that 
day witnessed often. Even at this time, however, he was a very severe 
student, and made up in hard reading at night, the time given to society 
and lighter pursuits in the evening." — Life, pp. 345 — 348. 



Note s, p. 107. 

A beautiful letter, descriptive of Heber's character in India, must not 
be omitted in these biographical illustrations. 



OXFORD. [notes. 



" My Lord, 
"I know not how to refrain from venturing in some allusion to the ge- 
neral sentiments of deep interest and lively gratification excited by your 
lordship's visit to this place, (Benares,) and the very sincere regrets which 
have followed your departure. Of all the pleasing impressions which 
your lordship has left to commemorate your brief sojourn amongst us, I 
will not here presume to speak ; but I may hope your lordship will not 
be displeased with the brief assurance, that your visit has been produc- 
tive of much good in this community, in points essentially connected with 
those high and sacred interests which are so peculiarly under your charge, 
and even so near to all the movements of your heart. For the mention 
of my own individual share in the grateful impressions your lordship has 
diffused amongst us, I will hope to have found an admissible excuse 
with your lordship, while I ascribe some portions of it to associations 
awakened by your presence, recalling to my mind the days of other 
times, the scenes of my youth, and of my native land ; and many a re- 
collection of no light or ordinary interest, to one who has wandered so 
far and so long from the dulce domiim of his early life. Your lordship 
will readily conceive how this might be ; and thus it will hardly seem 
strange to you, that the strains of pious and holy instruction, which 
fixed so impressive a record of our first visitation by a protestant prelate 
on the minds of us all, should have spoken with peculiar emphasis to 
one, who, after many a year of toil and exile in a foreign clime, recog- 
nized in the accents which now preached the word of the living God, 
amid the favourite abodes of heathen idolatry, that selfsame voice, which 
in the days of youthful enthusiasm, and ardent and undamped fancy, had 
poured on his delighted ear the lay that sung the sacred theme of the 
Redeemer's hand, amid the long-loved haunts of his Alma Mater ; amid 
the venerated temples of the religion of our fathers. But let me not 
give a license to my pen which may seem to bespeak me forgetful of the 
high value of your lordship's time. Permit me, my lord, to conclude 
with unfeigned and most fervent wishes for your long enjoyment of 
health and vigour, for the gratification of all the hopes with which you 
contemplate the interesting journey before you, and for the success of 



part i.] OXFORD. 237 

every plan which you may form for the advancement of those concerns 
of eternal moment, which have been so happily entrusted to your lord- 
ship's care. 

" I remain, my lord, 
" most respectfully and sincerely your's, 

" NORMAN MACLEOD." 
(Life, pp. 242—244.) 



NOTES TO PART II. 



Note a, p. 124. 

The sublime hopes which are awakened by the circulation of the scrip- 
tures suggest the name of one, whose pure Spirit now brightens in the 
presence of his Maker, but whose memory lives in the hearts of all who 
revere the faith of an apostle, and the devotion of a martyr, — Henry 
Martyn, late fellow of St. John's college, Cambridge. He who can peruse 
the biography of his glorious mind, as exhibited amid fearful toils and 
Christian labours, in a far and deathful clime, — without emotion, must 
be " more or less than man." 

" By him, and by his means, part of the Liturgy of the Church of Eng- 
land, the Parables, and the whole of the New Testament, were trans- 
lated into Hindoostanee ! By him, and by his means, also, the Psalms of 
David, and the New Testament were rendered into Persian ! By him 
also the prophet of Mecca was daringly exposed, and the truths of Chris- 
tianity openly vindicated, in the very heart and centre of a Mahometan 
empire ! — Surely, as long as England shall be celebrated for that pure and 
apostolical church, of which he was so great an ornament, the name of 
the subject of this Memoir will not wholly be forgotten; and whilst some 
shall delight to gaze on the splendid sepulchre of Xavier, and others 
choose rather to ponder over the granite stone which covers all that is 
mortal of Schwartz ; there will not be wanting those who will think of 
the humble and unfrequented grave of Henry Martyn." — {Memoir, by 
Sargent.) 

Note b, p . 127. 

To atone for the jealousies which too often disgrace the annals of mind, 
a delightful train of literary friendships may be adduced. Those fami- 
liar with intellectual biography will recall the names of Scipio and Lae- 



240 OXFORD. [notes. 

lius, Erasmus and sir Thomas More, Montaigne and Charron, Pe- 
trarch and Boccacio, Beaumont and Fletcher, Addison and Steele, West 
and Gray. Cowley has a beautiful alhision to a literary friendship : — 

Say, for ye saw us, ye immortal lights ! 
How oft unwearied have we spent the nights, 
Till the Ledean stars so famed for love 
Wonder'd at us from above. — 
We spent them not in toys, in lust, or wine, 

But search of deep philosophy, 

Wit, eloquence, and poetry ; 
Arts which I loved, for they, my friend, were thine. 

This passage is matched by one in Persius : 

Tecum etenim longos memini consumere soles, 

Et tecum primas epulis decerpere noctes. 

Unum opus, et requiem pariter disponimus ambo, 

Atque verecunda laxamus sf-ria mensa. Sat. V. 40 — 44. 



Note c, p. 140. 

" Solitude and society may be illustrated by a lake and a river. In the 
one, indeed, we can view the heavens more calmly and distinctly ; but 
we can also see our image more clearly, and are in danger of the sin of 
Narcissus ; while in the river, the view both of the heavens and our- 
selves is more broken and disturbed ; but health and fertility is scattered 
round." — (From Wolfe's Juvenile Papers.) 

Note d, p. 141. 

" At the dissolution, the great bell at Christ Church, commonly called 
' Tom,' was taken from the tower of the monastery of Osney : it was 
then placed in the campanile of the tower of Christ Church cathedral, 
whence it was removed to its present situation, after the completion of 
the tower by sir Christopher Wren. Prior to its being recast, it bore 
the following inscription, ' In Thomae laude resona Bim Bom sine 
fraude :' its present inscription is ' Magnus Thomas Oxoniensis.' " — 
(Vide Skelton's Oxonia Antigua Restaurata.) 



part ii.] OXFORD. 241 

Note e, p. 147. 

Chatterton, 

The marvellous boy, 

The sleepless soul that perish'd in its pride. 

Midnight studies and midnight agonies were not unknown to him. 
Poor, proud, and persecuted, alone in the wilderness of London, with a 
genius restless as it was extraordinary, — how often did the daylight shine 
upon his simken brow and shattered frame ! Kirke White was equally a 
victim to the fascinations of midnight study. Several pathetic allusions 
to this fatal luxury are sprinkled over his productions. In a poem en- 
titled Time, he exclaims — 

The night's my own : they cannot steal my night ! 
When ev'ning lights her folding star on high 
I live and breathe ; and in the sacred hours 
Of quiet and repose, my spirit flies 
Free as the morning o'er the realms of space. 

While on the subject of Chatterton and Kirke White, may we venture 
to add, that the mind of the former was of far more original grasp than 
that of the latter ; yet how different has been their poetical destinies ! 
The beauty of White's moral has reflected a brightness o'er his intellec- 
tual character; — and it is well for mankind that it has done so; for one 
virtue is worth a thousand talents. 

Lord Orford has thus appreciated the genius of Chatterton : " His 
life should be compared with the powers of his mind, the perfection of 
his poetry, his knowledge of the world, which, though in some respects 
erroneous, spoke quick intuition ; his humour, his vein of satire, and, 
above all, the amazing number of books he must have looked into, 
though chained down to a laborious and almost incessant service, and 
confined to Bristol, except at most for the last five months of his life, 
the rapidity with which he seized all the topics of conversation then in 
vogue, whether of politics, literature, or fashion ; and when added to all 
this mass of reflection, it is remembered that his youthful passions were 
indulged to excess, faith in such a prodigy may be well suspended ; and 
we should look for some secret agent behind the curtain, if it were not as 
difficult to believe that any man who possessed such a vein of genuine 



242 OXFORD. [notes. 

poetry would have submitted to lie concealed, while he actuated a pup- 
pet ; or would have stooped to prostitute his muse to so many unworthy 
functions. But nothing in Chatterton can be separated from Chatterton. 
His ablest flight, his sweetest strains, his grossest ribaldry, and his most 
commonplace imitations of the productions of magazines, were all the 
effervescences of the same ungovernable impulse, which, cameleon-like, 
imbibed the colours of all it looked on. It was Ossian, or a Saxon monk, 
or Gray, or Smollet, or Junius ; and if it failed most in what it most af- 
fected to be, a poet of the fifteenth century, it was because it could not 
imitate what had not existed." 



A 

BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY 

OF 

EMINENT CHARACTERS CONNECTED WITH THE 
UNIVERSITY. 



IN compiling the following Summary, which, it is presumed, will not 
be found useless as a literary reference, the author was greatly indebted 
to Chalmers's list, extracted from the Athena ; and other collegiate re- 
cords. His acknowledgments are also due to Mr. Skelton, whose mag- 
nificent work, Pietas Oxoniensis, when completed, will be alike honour- 
able to his genius, and his country. 



MERTON COLLEGE. 

FOUNDED IN I 264. 

Duns Scotus ; John Wickliffe ; sir Thomas Bodley ; sir Henry Sa- 
vile ; the pious John Hales ; William Harvey, (discoverer of the circu- 
lation of the blood ;) Bradwardine and Islip, archbishops of Canterbury; 
Hooper, the martyred bishop of Gloucester ; Dr. Jewell of Salisbury ; 
Dr. Carleton of Chichester; and Grimoald, poet; Heywood, do.; Dr. 
Goulston ; sir Isaac Wake ; Dr. Bainbridge ; Devereux, earl of Essex ; 
Farnaby ; Francis Cheynell ; Samuel Clarke the orientalist ; Hugh 
Cressy, the Roman Catholic historian ; Anthony Wood, the Oxford his- 
torian ; and sir Richard Steele, at one time postmaster here. 
y 2 



244 OXFORD. 



UNIVERSITY COLLEGE. 

FOUNDED IN I280. 

Prelates. Walter Skirlaw, bishop of Durham, ob. 1405 ; Richard 
Flemming, bishop of Lincoln, and founder of Lincoln college ; John Sher- 
wood, bishop of Durham ; Ridley, the martyr, sometime fellow here, 
afterwards of Cambridge ; Dr. Tobie Mathew, archbishop of York ; 
Bancroft, bishop of Oxford ; Potter, archbishop of Canterbury, and au- 
thor of Grecian Antiquities, &c. &c; Dr. Charles Littleton, bishop of 
Carlisle, and president of the Society of Antiquaries. 

Richard Stannyhurst, poet and critic ; the learned family of the Digges ; 
Leonard and Thomas, mathematicians ; sir George Croke, chief-justice of 
England ; lord Herbert of Cherbury ; General Langbaine, the first 
biographer of dramatic writers ; Dr. Dudley Loftus, the oriental scholar; 
Dr. John Hudson, keeper of the Bodleian library ; Flavel, the noncon- 
formist ; Dr. Radcliife, afterwards of Lincoln ; Rev. Joseph Bingham, 
author of Origines Ecclesiasticce ; William Elstob ; Carte, the historian, 
took his first degree here, previously to his removing to Cambridge ; Jago, 
the poet and friend of Shenstone ; sir Robert Chambers, Vinerian pro- 
fessor in 1777 ; sir William Jones, whose monument by Flaxman was 
presented to his college by lady Flaxman ; sir Roger Newdigate, the 
founder of the Newdigate Prize ; lord Eldon, the late lord high chan- 
cellor of England ; and lord Stow ell. 



BALLIOL COLLEGE. 

FOUNDED IN I 282. 

Prelates. Morton, archbishop of Canterbury, and second perpetual 
chancellor of the university ; Dr. John Douglas, bishop of Salisbury, 
who detected the impostures of Lauder and Bower, and ably advocated 
the miracles of the Christian faith. 

Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, founder of the Bodleian ; John Tip- 
toft, earl of Worcester, who presented some valuable MSS. to the uni- 



BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY. 245 

versity ; the celebrated lawyers, sir John Popham, lord Coventry, sir 
Humphrey Davenport, and sir Robert Atkyns ; Dr. Thomas Holland ; 
Tobias Crisp, founder of the Antinomian sect; John Evelyn ; Dr. Charles 
Davenant, son of the poet ; Dr. David Gregory ; Keil and Bradley, the 
astronomers ; Dr. William King ; Hutchinson, the historian of Dorset- 
shire ; James West, president of the royal society ; Robert Southey, 
poet laureate, &c. &c. Lockhart, editor of the Quarterly, &c. &c. 



EXETER COLLEGE. 

FOUNDED IN J 3 1 4. 

Prelates. Dr. Bayley, bishop of Bangor, author of The Practice of 
Piety ; Dr. Prideaux, bishop of Worcester ; Dr. Bull, bishop of St. 
David's, one of the ablest champions of our church ; and archbishop 
Seeker. 

John de Trevisa, translator of Higden's Polychronicon ; sir John For- 
tescue, the eminent lawyer ; sir George More ; Browne, the poet, author 
of Britannia '$ Pastorals; Robert Hayman, a poet of less renown ; lord 
Falkland ; sir John Doddridge ; sir William Noy, attorney-general ; sir 
Anthony, Nicholas, and Thomas Fitzherbert ; Diggory Wheare, first 
Camden professor ; James duke of Hamilton, beheaded for his attach- 
ment to Charles I ; Dr. Arthur Duck ; lord chief-justice Rolle ; sir 
Simon Baskerville ; Joseph Caryll, the commentator on the book of 
Job ; John Poulett, marquis of Winchester, whose epitaph Dryden writ, 
as Milton did that of the marchioness ; Thomas Brancker, mathemati- 
cian ; lord Shaftesbury; Quick, the ecclesiastical historian ; Dr. Gideon 
Harvey ; Anstis, the heraldist; Dr. Walker, historian of the loyal clergy ; 
Maundrell, the traveller ; Samuel Wesley, father of the founder of 
methodism ; Dr. Borlase ; sir Michael Foster ; Mr. Lewis of Margate, 
the biographer ; Norris, the Platonist ; Upton, the editor of Epictetus ; 
Toup, of classic fame ; Tindal, the continuator of Rapin ; Hole, the 
poet ; and Dr. Kennicot. 



v3 



246 OXFORD. 



ORIEL COLLEGE. 

FOUNDED IN I326. 

Prelates. Arundel, archbishop of Canterbury ; Dr. Butler, bishop of 
Durham, author of the celebrated Analogy ; bishop Mant ; and Dr. 
Edward Copleston, dean of St. Paul's and bishop of Llandaff. 

Robert Langlande, supposed author of Pierce Plowman ; Alexander 
Barclay, translator of the Ship of Fools — Warton thinks his five eclogues 
the first which appeared in the English language ; Dr. Edgeworth, a 
popish writer; Morgan Phillips, the sophister ; Peter White, ejected 
dean of Waterford ; sir Walter Raleigh ; Prynne, the republicanist and 
antiquary ; Richard Brathwaite, a poet and wit ; sir William Scroggs, 
and sir John Holt, lord chief -justices of the king's bench ; Dr. William 
Berriman ; Dr. Edward Bentham, originally of Corpus ; Joseph War- 
ton ; Keble, author of a beautiful collection of poems, deservedly popular, 
entitled the Christian Year. 

QUEEN'S COLLEGE. 

FOUNDED IN I340. 

Prelates. Cardinal Beaufort, brother to Hen. IV ; Bps. Bainbridge, 
Robinson, Potter, and Barlow ; Dr. Guy Carleton, bishop of Bristol, 
afterwards of Cirencester ; Dr Compton, bishop of London ; Dr. William 
Nicholson, author of the Historical Library; Dr. Gibson, bishop of 
London, founder of the preacherships at Whitehall ; Dr. Tanner, bishop 
of St. Asaph, author of Notitia and Bibliotheca. 

Heniy V. whose chamber was over the great gate of the old college, 
opposite to Edmund Hall ; Bernard Gilpin ; sir Thomas Overbury ; 
Wingate, an eminent lawyer and arithmetician ; Bin-ton, the commen- 
tator on Antoninus ; Dr. Holyoake, lexicographer ; sir John Davies, 
poet ; sir John Banks ; sir Edward Tumour, chief baron ; Dr. Samuel 
Annesley, an eminent nonconformist ; Dr. Lancelot Addison, dean of 
Litchfield ; Dr. Thomas Hyde ; Wycherley, the poet ; Dr. John Mill, 






BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY. 247 

editor of the Greek Testament ; sir John Floyer ; Dr. Edmund Halley, 
an eminent philosopher, and Savilian professor ; Addison, and his 
friend Tickell ; Dr. Hugh Todd, antiquary ; Dr. Thomas Smith, bio- 
grapher ; Dr. John Hudson ; Christopher Rawlinson and Edward 
Thwaites, Saxon scholars ; Rev. Jeremiah Seed ; Dr. Shaw the tra- 
veller; Collins the poet; Dr. John Dalton, the reviver of Milton's 
Cornus ; Edward Row Mores, antiquary ; Thomas Tyrwhitt, editor of 
Chaucer, afterwards fellow of Merton ; Dr. Richard Burn, author of 
the Justice of Peace ; Dr. George Fothergill ; Mitford the historian ; 
Jeremy Bentham ; Dr. Van Mildert, bishop of Llandaff, and of Dur- 
ham in 1826 ; Ireland, dean of Westminster ; Dr. Meyrick, author of 
works on Arms and Armour ; Lancaster, author of the Harmon)/ of the 
Law and Gospel. 

NEW COLLEGE. 

FOUNDED IN I386. 

Prelates. Cranley, archbishop of Dublin ; Chichele, of Canterbury ; 
Thomas Beckington, bishop of Bath and Wells ; John Russel, bishop of 
Rochester and Lincoln, chancellor of England ; William Warham, archbi- 
shop of Canterbury, patron of Erasmus ; Sherborne,, bishop of Chichester ; 
Bilson, of Winchester ; Lake, of Bath and Wells ; Gunning, of Ely ; 
Turner, of Ely ; Kenn, of Bath and Wells ; Bisse, of Hereford ; La- 
vington, of Exeter ; and the illustrious Dr. Robert Lowth, of St. Da- 
vid's, Oxford, and London ; George Isaac Huntingford, present bishop 
of Hereford ; Hon. Henry Bathurst, of Norwich ; and William How- 
ley, present archbishop of Canterbury. 

Grocyn, one of the revivers of learning; Stanbridge, the gramma- 
rian ; Philpot, civilian and linguist ; Talbot, antiquarian ; Pullaine, 
poet and translator ; Harding, opposer of bishop Jewell ; Fowler, the 
learned printer ; Nicholas Saunders ; sir Henry Sidney, father of sir 
Philip ; Thomas Neale ; Dr. Baley ; Turberville, the poet ; Christopher 
Johnson, Latin poet ; Thomas Stapleton ; Lloyd, master of Winchester 
school ; Pits, one of our early biographers ; Bastard and Owen, the epi- 



248 OXFORD. 

grammatists ; John Bond, the commentator ; Dr. Thomas James, first 
librarian at the Bodleian ; Herbert the poet ; sir Henry Wotton ; sir 
Henry Martin ; Dr. Zouch ; Thomas Lydiat ; sir Thomas Ryves ; Dr. 
Bruno Ryves, dean of Windsor, and writer of the first newspapers 
published in England ; Dr. Edward Young, father of the poet ; sir Ed- 
ward Herbert; Wood, author of the Institutes of the Laivs of Eng- 
land ; Dr. William Musgrave ; Somerville and Pitt, poets ; Rev. Jo- 
seph Spence; Dr. Gloster Ridley, the biographer of his great ancestor 
the martyr ; Dr. William Smith, translator of Thucydides and Longi- 
nus ; Dr. Robert Holmes, the learned collator of the Septuagint ; Rev. 
Sydney Smith; Dr. Crotch, the celebrated composer of Palestine, 
&c. &c. 

LINCOLN COLLEGE. 

FOUNDED IN I427. 

Prelates. Dr. Edward Wetenhall, bishop of Cork and Ross, of Kild- 
more and Kildagh; Dr. Clavering, bishop of Llandaff and Peterborough, 
many years Hebrew professor; Dr. Robert Sanderson, bishop of Lin- 
coln, the famous casuist; archbishop Potter was also a fellow of this 
college. 

Robert Flemyng, nephew of the founder, author of an elegant poem, 
entitled Lucubrationes TiburtincB. On his return from the conti- 
nent, he deposited in the college library some finely illuminated MSS, 
and a Greek and Latin Dictionary of his own writing, extant in Le- 
land's time, by whom it is mentioned ; sir Edmund Anderson, chief- 
justice of the king's bench; Bolton, the puritan divine, afterwards of 
Brasen Nose ; Dr. Kelbye, one of the translators of the Bible ; Edward 
Weston, champion of the Roman catholic cause ; Richard Brett, one of 
the translators of the Bible; Dr. John Davies, an eminent linguist and 
antiquary; Thomas Hayne, the grammarian; Dr. Christopher Bennet, 
physician and medical writer; Arthur Hopton; sir William Davenant, 
poet; Cornelius Burges, a distinguished parliamentary divine; Henry 
Foulis, ecclesiastical historian; John Kettlewell and Dr. George Hickes, 



BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY. 249 

nonjurors ; sir George Wheler, traveller and botanist ; Tindal, the deist, 
afterwards of Exeter and All Souls ; Dr. Richard Grey and the pious 
James Hervey; John Wesley, founder of methodism; Dr. John Sib- 
thorp, author of the Flora Oxoniensis and the Flora Gvceca. The two 
greatest modern benefactors to this University were fellows of this Col- 
lege, Lord Crewe and Dr. Radcliffe. 



ALL SOULS COLLEGE. 

FOUNDED IN 1 43 7. 

Prelates. Among the most celebrated are Goldwell, bishop of Norwich, 
and Bulhngham, bishop of Lincoln and Worcester ; Duppa of Win- 
chester, and archbishop Sheldon were elected fellows here, but educated, 
the first at Christ Church, the second at Trinity; Jeremy Taylor, 
the illustrious divine, bishop of Down and Connor, became a fellow here 
in 1636, by the nomination of archbishop Laud. 

Linacre, the first person who taught Greek at Oxford; he was one 
of the founders of the College of Physicians; Leland; Recorde; An- 
drew Kingsmill, linguist and divine, formerly of Corpus; Dr. Key, or 
Cay, one of the earliest Oxford historians; sir Anthony Sherley; sir 
John Mason, privy counsellor ; sir William Petre ; Robert Heyrick, 
poet; Marchmont Needham, one of the earliest newspaper hacks, who 
supported the Ohverian cause ; Joseph Keble, first of Jesus, a law-writer 
of incredible industry; so diseased with fondness for reporting, that he 
reported all the cases in the king's bench from 1661 to 1710, and all 
the sermons preached in Gray's Inn chapel, amounting to above 4000 ! 
Dr. Matthew Tindal, equally famous for gluttony and deism ; John Nor- 
ris, rector of Bemerton ; Dr. Sydenham, improver of medical science ; sir 
William Trumbull, the friend of Pope ; lord chancellor Talbot, first of 
Oriel ; and sir Christopher Wren. 

In the departments of Law and Politics — sir Robert Weston, lord 
chancellor of Ireland, in Elizabeth's time; sir Clement Edmonds; sir 
Daniel Dunn; Henry Coventry, secretary of state to Charles II; sir 
William Blackstone, formerly of Pembroke. 



250 OXFORD. 

MAGDALEN COLLEGE. 

FOUNDED IN I456. 

Prelates. Fuller remarks that there is scarcely a bishopric in England 
to which this college has not afforded a prelate. Cardinals Wolsey and 
Pole were both educated here ; Pole entered as a nobleman, and resided 
in the president's lodgings ; Lee and Frewen, archbishops of York ; 
Boulter, archbishop of Armagh ; Longland, bishop of Lincoln ; Cooper, 
of Winchester ; Warner, of Rochester ; Nicholson, of Gloucester ; Hop- 
kins, of Raphoe and Derry ; Hough, of Worcester ; Smalbroke, of 
Lichfield and Coventry ; Home of Norwich. 

Many of the scholars who studied here during the first half century 
from the foundation contributed greatly to the revival of literature, 
which aided the advancement of the reformation. Of these, Dean Colet, 
and Lily, the grammarian, Linacre, and Latimer, may be mentioned. 
It could afterwards boast of Dr. John Roper, the famous theologist; 
Dr. Wotton, physician to Henry VIII; Robertson, one of the compilers 
of the Liturgy, in 1549 ; Fox, the celebrated author of Acts and 
Monuments of the Church ; sir Francis Knollis, statesman ; Lily, 
dramatic poet ; Dr. Field ; Dr. Thomas Godwyn, Hebrew antiquary ; 
sir Thomas Roe, the ambassador ; Hampden, the patriot ; John Digby, 
earl of Bristol ; Chilmead, critic and philologist ; Theophilus Gale, non- 
conformist ; the pious Dr. Hammond ; Dr. Peter Heylin, ecclesiastical 
historian ; George Withers, poet ; Harmar, the Greek professor ; Elisha 
Coles, Latin lexicographer ; sir Robert Howard, dramatic poet ; Dr. 
Thomas Smith, the traveller; the illustrious Addison ; Dr. Sa- 
cheverell, the associate of Addison; Collins; Yalden; and Holdsworth, 
poets ; Horbery and Waldgrave, divines ; Gibbon, the historian ; Dr. 
Townson and Dr. Chandler ; John Wilson*, the distinguished poet, 

* To say nothing of the beauty of Wilson's poetry, he has exerted more in- 
fluence over the periodical literature of the day than any living writer. But, 
like all original minds, his has been mimicked by small reviewers, who con- 
trive to ape the eccentricities of his style, but are utterly destitute of the merit 
and fervour of his thoughts. Similar was the fate of lord Byron. His lordship 



BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY. 251 

and present Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edin- 
burgh. 

felt, or fancied himself, an unhappy being, and vented his feelings accordingly. 
Forthwith a sentimental paleness overspread the land, and poetical Werterism 
became the fashion of the hour ! Such vulgar mimicry recalls to our mind a saying 
of Allan Cunningham's, in reference to a certain writer's Napoleon, when com- 
pared to Walter Scott's — " The braying of an ass after the sound of a trumpet." 

The following note, relative to Wilson's career at the university, is from the 
pen of the celebrated " Opium Eater" — De Quincey — himself an Oxford man. At 
a time when the surly ignorance of mistaken writers is wont to sneer at our uni- 
versities, it is gratifying to see an author of acknowledged genius like De Quincey 
looking back on the scenes of Alma Mater with respectful love, and speaking of 
her greatness as becomes his theme. 

Vos, dulcissima mundi 

Nomina, vos musse, libertas, lsetia, libri, 
Hortique sylveeque, anima remanente relinquam? 

" From the latter end of 1803 to the spring of 1808, Mr. Wilson had studied at the 
university of Oxford. He had previously studied as a mere boy, according to the 
Scotch fashion, at the university of Glasgow, chiefly under the tuition of the late 
Mr. Jardine (the professor, I believe, of logic) and Dr. or Mr. Young, (the pro- 
fessor of Greek). At both universities he had greatly distinguished himself; but 
at Oxford, where the distribution of prizes and honours of every kind is to the 
last degree parsimonious and select, naturally it follows that such academical 
distinctions are really significant distinctions, and proclaim an unequivocal 
merit in him who has carried them off from a crowd of 1600 or 2000 co-rivals, to 
whom the contest was open ; whereas, in the Scotch universities, as I am told by 
Scotchmen, the multiplication of prizes and medals, and the almost indiscrimi- 
nate profusion with which they are showered abroad, neutralizes their whole 
effect and value. At least this was the case in Mr. Wilson's time ; but lately 
some conspicuous changes have been introduced by a royal commission (not yet, 
I believe, dissolved) into one at least of the Scotch universities, which have 
greatly improved it in this respect, by bringing it much nearer to the English 
model. When Mr. Wilson gained a prize of fifty guineas for fifty lines of English 
verse, without further inquiry it becomes evident, from the mere rarity of the 
distinction, which, for a university now nearly of five thousand members, occurs 
but once a year, and from the great over-proportion of that peculiar class (the 
undergraduates) to whom the contest is open, that such a victory was an indis- 
putable criterion of very conspicuous merit. In fact, never in any place did Mr. 
Wilson play off his Proteus variety of character and talent with so much brilliant 
effect as at Oxford. In this great university, the most ancient, and by many de- 



252 OXFORD. 



BRASEN-NOSE COLLEGE. 

FOUNDED IN 1509. 

Prelates. Hugh Curwin, or Coren, archbishop of Dublin ; Barnes, 
bishop of Durham ; Wolton, of Exeter ; Miles Smith, of Gloucester, 

grees the most magnificent in the world, he found a stage for display perfectly 
congenial with the native elevation of his own character. Perhaps you are not 
fully aware of the characteristic differences which separate our two English uni- 
versities of Oxford and Cambridge from those of Scotland and the continent : for 
I have always observed that the best-informed foreigners, even after a week's per- 
sonal acquaintance with the Oxford system, still adhere to the inveterate pre- 
conceptions which they had brought with them from the continent. For in- 
stance, they continue obstinately to speak of the professors as the persons to 
whom the students are indebted for tuition ; whereas the majority of these hold 
their oifices as the most absolute sinecures ; and the task of tuition devolves upon 
the tutors appointed in each particular college. These tutors are called public 
tutors ; meaning that they do not confine their instructions to any one individual, 
but distribute them amongst all the undergraduates of the college to which they 
belong; and, in addition to these, private tutors are allowed to any student who 
chooses to increase his expenditure in that particular. But the main distinction, 
which applies to our immediate subject, is the more than regal provision for the 
lodging and accommodation of the students by the system of colleges. Of these 
there are in Oxford, neglecting the technical subdivision of halls, five-and- twenty ; 
and the main use of all, both colleges and halls, is, not as in Scotland and on the 
continent, to lodge the head of the university with suitable dignity, and to pro- 
vide rooms for the library and public business of the university. These purposes 
are met by a separate provision, distinct from the colleges ; and the colleges are 
applied as follows : 1st, and mainly, to the reception of the fellows, and of the 
undergraduate students ; 2dly, to the accommodation of the head (known in dif- 
ferent colleges by the several designations of provost, principal, dean, rector, war- 
den, &c.) ; 3dly, to the accommodation of the private library attached to that col- 
lege, and to the chapel, which is used at least twice every day for public prayers ; 
4thly, to the hall, and the whole establishment of kitchen, wine-vaults, buttery, &c. 
&c. which may be supposed necessary for the liberal accommodation, at the public 
meals of dinner, [and in some colleges supper,] of gentlemen and visitors from the 
country, or from the continent; varying (we will suppose) from 2$ to 500 heads. 
Every where else the great mass of the students are lodged in obscure nooks and 
corners, which may or may not be respectable, but are at all events withdrawn 
from the surveillance of the university. I shall state both the ground and the ef- 



BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY. 253 

one of the greatest scholars of his day, and principal translator of the 
Bible. 

feet (or tendency rather) of this difference. Out of England, universities are not 
meant exclusively for professional men : the sons of great landholders, and a large 
proportion of the sons of noblemen, either go through the same academic course 
as others, or a shorter course adapted to their particular circumstances. In Eng- 
land, again, the church is supplied from the rank of gentry — not exclusively, it is 
true, but in a much larger proportion than any where else, except in Ireland. The 
corresponding ranks in Scotland, from their old connection with France, have 
adopted (I believe) much more of the continental plans for disposing of their sons 
at this period. At any rate, it will not be contended by any man, that Scotland 
throws any thing like the same proportion with England of her gentry and her 
peerage into her universities. Hence a higher standard of manners and of habits 
presides at Oxford and Cambridge ; and, consequently, a demand for much higher 
accommodations would even otherwise have arisen, had not such a demand already 
been supplied by the munificence of our English princes and peers, both male and 
female ; and, in one instance at least, of a Scottish prince (Balliol). The extent of 
these vast caravanseras enables the governors of the various colleges to furnish 
every student with a set of two rooms at the least, often with a suite of three, — [I, 
who lived at Oxford on no more than my school-allowance, had that number,] — or 
in many cases with far more. In the superior colleges, indeed, (superior, I mean, 
as to their purse and landed endowments,) all these accommodations keep pace 
with the refinements of the age ; and thus a connection is maintained between the 
University and the landed noblesse — upper and lower — of England, which must be 
reciprocally beneficial, and which, under other circumstances, could scarcely have 
taken place. 

" Of these advantages you may be sure that Mr. Wilson availed himself to the ut- 
most extent. Instead of going to Balliol college, he entered himself at Magdalen, 
in the class of what are called " Gentlemen Commoners." All of us (you know) 
in Oxford and Cambridge wear an academic dress, which tells at once our acade- 
mic rank with all its modifications. And the term Gentleman Commoner implies 
that he has more splendid costumes, and more in number; that he is expected to 
spend a good deal more money ; that he enjoys a few trifling immunities ; and 
that he has, in particular instances, something like a king's right of preemption, as 
in the choice of rooms, &c. 

" Once launched in this orbit, Mr. Wilson continued to blaze away for the four 
successive years, 1804-S-6-7, I believe without any intermission. Possibly I myself 
was the one sole gownsman who had not then found my attention fixed by his 
most heterogeneous reputation. In a similar case, Cicero tells a man that igno- 
rance so unaccountable of another man's pretensions, argued himself to be a homo 
ignorabilis ; or, in the language of the Miltonic Satan, 
Not to know me, argues thyself unknown. 



254 OXFORD. 

Robert Nowell, attorney-general, and Lawrence Nowell, dean of 
Lichfield, an eminent antiquary, who revived the study of the Saxon 
language ; Caldwell, president of the college of physicians ; William 
Whittingham, poetical coadjutor of Sternhold and Hopkins in the trans- 
lation of the Psalms ; Fox, the martyrologist ; sir John Savile, and 
his younger brother, provost of Eton, where he printed his edition of 
St. Chrysostom ; Barnaby Barnes, dramatic poet ; Ferdinand Pulton, 
law-writer ; Jeremiah Stephens, coadjutor of sir Hem-y Spelman in 
the publication of the Councils ; sir John Spelman, author of the Life 
of Alfred the Great ; Brerewood, mathematician Ralph RadclifFe ; 
Humphrey Lluyd, or Lloyd, the Welch historian ; sir John Stradling, 
poet ; Sampson Erdeswick, the Staffordshire antiquary ; sir Peter Ley- 
cester, the Cheshire ditto ; lord chancellor Egerton, baron Ellesmere, and 
viscount Brackley ; Burton, author of the Anatomy of Melancholy ; 
sir William Petty ; Elias Ashmole, founder of the Museum ; John 
Prince, author of the Worthies of Devon ; Dr. W. Assheton ; Tho- 
mas Beconsall, defender of revealed religion ; Thomas Church, D. D. 
whose degree was presented to him by diploma Feb. 23, 1749, for 
answering Bolingbroke ; the Rev. John Watson, author of the His- 
tory of Halifax, &c. &c. ; Whitaker, the Manchester historian, after- 



And that is true : a homo ignorabilis most certainly I was. And even with that ad- 
mission it is still difficult to account for the extent and the duration of my igno- 
rance. The fact is, that the case well expresses both our positions : that he should 
he so conspicuous as to challenge knowledge from the most sequestered of ancho- 
rites expresses his life : that I should have right to absolute ignorance of him who 
was familiar as daylight to all the rest of Oxford expresses mine. Never indeed 
before, to judge from what I have since heard upon inquiry, did a man, by variety 
of talents and variety of humours, contrive to place himself as the connecting link 
between orders of men so essentially repulsive of each other— as Mr. Wilson in 
this instance. 

Omnis Aristippum decuit color, et status, et res : 

" From the learned president of his college, Dr. Kouth, the editor of parts of Plato, 
and of some Theological Selections, with whom Wilson enjoyed an unlimited fa- 
vour—from this learned academic doctor, and many others of the same class, Wil- 
son had an infinite gamut of friends and associates, running through every key." 



BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY. 255 

wards elected scholar of Corpus ; Hodson, late principal ; Bishop 
Heber ; and Mil man, the present professor of poetry. 



CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE. 

FOUNDED IN I516. 

Prelates. Cardinal Pole, first of Magdalen ; Jewell, bishop of Salis- 
bury ; Webb, bishop of Limerick, sometime of University college ; Dr. 
Fowler, of Gloucester ; and Dr. Richard Pococke, bishop of Meath, the 
celebrated orientalist ; Burgess, bishop of Salisbury. 

John Shepreve ; Redman, or Redmayne, afterwards first master of 
Trinity college, Cambridge, one of the compilers of the Liturgy ; Mor- 
wen ; Nicholas Udal and Richard Edwards, poets, the latter one of our 
earliest dramatists, whose Palcemon and Arcite was acted before queen 
Elizabeth in Christ Church hall, on her visit here in 1566; Miles 
Windsor, the first Oxford historian ; Hooker ; sir Edward Sandys, 
statesman ; Dr. Sebastian Benefiekl ; Gill, master of St. Paul's school ; 
Dr. Daniel Featly; the illustrious Hales; sir John Mennis, tra- 
veller, seaman, and poet ; Edmund Chishul, divine and antiquary ; 
Dr. Richard Fiddes, the biographer of cardinal Wolsey ; John Anstis, 
the herald ; Henry Hare ; lord Colerane ; Dr. Nathaniel Forster ; Dr. 
John Burton ; Dr. Jeremiah Milles, dean of Exeter ; sir Ashton Lever, 
the collector of an immense museum of natural history, dispersed by 
auction a few years ago ; Thomas Day, an eccentric fellow, who never 
obtained a degree; Coleridge, the poet; professor Buckland; and 
Vaughan Thomas, the distinguished divine. 

CHRIST CHURCH COLLEGE. 

FOUNDED IN I 53 2. 

Prelates. The archbishops and bishops educated here are too nu- 
merous to be noticed. Among the most eminent we find, Bancroft, 
Prideaux, Sanderson, Blandford, Dolben, Compton, Gastrell, Synge, 
z 2 



256 OXFORD. 

Potter, Tanner, Benson, Robinson, and Shipley. Among the names 
eminent in ecclesiastical history, we find the reformer Peter Martyr ; 
M. Heton, bishop of Ely ; Richard Edes, dean of Worcester ; Leonard 
Hutten ; John Wall, prebendary of Salisbury ; Thomas Lockey, pub- 
he librarian ; Dr. Edward Pocock ; Dr. Robert South ; Dr. Richard 
Allestree ; Dr. Roger Altham ; archbishop Wake ; Dr. Robert Freind ; 
Dr. Newton, founder of Hertford college ; Van Mildert, bishop of 
Durham. 

" The scholars," observes Chalmers, " of other ranks, who have added 
to the reputation of this college, are so numerous, that a few only can 
be noticed. The literary history of Christ Church might be extended 
to many volumes. 

In the list of Statesmen and Lawyers occur the names of sir 
Dudley Carleton ; sir William Godolphin ; sir W. Ellis ; Edw. Sackville, 
earl of Dorset; sir Gilbert Dolben; Henry Mordaunt; Heneage Finch 
and Daniel Finch, earls of Nottingham ; Henry Bennet, earl of Arling- 
ton ; sir J. Vaughan; Thomas Lutwyche; Trevor; viscount Chetwynd; 
Wainwright; Skinner; Trelawny ; Henry Villiers ; sir William Wynd- 
ham; earl Granville; sir Thomas Hanmer; Andrew Stone; lord Lyttel- 
ton ; earl Mansfield ; lord Holland ; John Mostyn ; sir Francis Bernard ; 
baron Mendip; Amyand; Devisme; sir John Skinner; sir Gould Mor- 
gan ; Richard Leveson Gower ; &c. &c. &c. 

Poets and Orators. Dr. James Calfhill ; sir Philip Sidney ; Stephen 
Gosson; George Peele; Thomas Storer; William Gager; Thos. Goffe; 
Ben Jonson ; Gomersal; Strode; Warmstrey; Hemmings; Holyday; 
Cartwright; Randolph; Waring; Maplet; Rhodes; Owen; Allestree; 
Nicholas Brady; Otway; Villiers; King; Harrington; Alsop; Samuel 
Wesley; Phillips; Edmund Smith; Gilbert West; Bramston; Thorn- 
ton ; George Colman ; Dr. Butt. 

During the 16th century, among the scholars of this house were, 
Hackluyt, the traveller ; Mulcaster, master of Merchant Taylors' 
school ; Carew, the historian of Cornwall ; Camden ; Torporley ; 
Caleb Willis ; sir Humphrey Lynd ; sir Thomas Aylesbury ; Edmund 
Gunter. 

Of the 1 7th century are, Nicholas Grey ; John Gregoiy, astronomer ; 



BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY. 257 

the learned Meric Casaubon ; James Heath, the historian ; Dr. Wil- 
lis ; Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania ; Stubbe, second keeper of the 
Bodleian; Lower; Locke; Francis Vernon, traveller and poet; 
Sparke, prebendaiy of Lichfield, editor of Lactantius and Zosimus ; 
Dr. Hooke, architect ; sir Edward Hannes, professor of chemistry ; 
Daniel Man ; Dr. Freind ; sir Andrew Fountaine, Anglo-Saxon scho- 
lar; Temple Stanyan ; Ivie, translator of Epictetus ; Frewen, professor 
of chemistry. 

In the 18th century, Richard Ince, a writer in the Spectator; Eu- 
stace Budgell, a more considerable contributor to that work; George 
Wigan ; Robert Leybourne, principal of Alban hall ; Lord Boling- 
broke ; Desaguliers ; Charles Boyle, Bentley's antagonist ; John Wi- 
gan, editor of Aristeeus ; Charles Wesley ; Browne Willis, antiquary ; 
Dr. William Drake, the historian of York; Dr. W. Sharpe, Greek 
professor ; the Rev. Clayton Mordaunt Cracherode, who left his valu- 
able library to the British Museum, the books estimated at 30,000/. ; 
Dr. W. Burton, historian of Yorkshire ; the present sir Robert Peel, 
bart. ; Conybeare, professor of poetry ; Duke or Wellington ; the 
illustrious Canning, &c. 



TRINITY COLLEGE. 

FOUNDED IN I 5 54. 

Prelates. Warton gives the following list of bishops and other emi- 
nent men, either educated at Trinity college, or living in it, while Dr. 
Bathurst was fellow or president. Ironside, bishop of Bristol ; Lucy, 
bishop of St. David's ; Skinner, of Worcester ; Glemham, of St. Asaph ; 
Stafford, of Chester; Parker, of Oxford; archbishop Sheldon; Sel- 
DEN ; Chillingworth ; Gellibrand, mathematician ; Aubrey, antiquary ; 
Arthur Wilson, author of the Life of James I ; sir John Denham, 
poet; sir Henry Blount ; sir James Harrington, author of the Oceana; 
Dr. Derham, author of Physico-theology ; Dr. D. Whitby ; John 
Evelyn ; sir Edward Bysche, the heraldist ; Potter, mathematician ; 
Dr. Warton, physician ; Anthony Farringdon, author of some learned 
z3 



258 OXFORD. 

sermons. To these may be added, the first lord Baltimore ; Charles 
Montague, earl of Halifax; lord Somers; earl or Chatham; and 
the second earl of Guildford, lord North ; the poets Lodge, Settle, Glan- 
ville, Manning, Merrick, and Headley ; Allen, mathematician ; Gill, 
master of St. Paul's school ; Ludlow, the republican chief ; sir John 
Ford, hydraulist ; Henry Birkenhead, founder of the lecture on 
poetry in the university ; Chamberlaine ; Dr. Cobden ; Coxeter, the 
miscellanist ; Lethieullier, antiquary; Wise, ditto; Thomas War- 
ton ; Lisle Bowles, poet; Ingram, the president. 



ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE. 

FOUNDED IN I557. 

Prelates. Tobie Matthew, archbishop of York; archbishop Laud, 
elected the ninth president of this college; in 1603 he was one of the 
proctors ; Dr. William Juxon, bishop of London ; Peter Mews, bishop 
of Winchester ; sir William Dawes, archbishop of York. 

Among the scholars are Campian, the celebrated Jesuit ; Dr. Case, 
the Aristotle commentator ; Blagrave, mathematician ; sir James White- 
locke, chief-justice ; How, the botanist ; Shirley, the dramatic poet ; 
Gayton, poet ; Whitelocke, the annalist, one of Cromwell's lords ; 
Marsham, the chronologist ; Bernard, Savilian professor ; William 
Lowth, the learned divine; Sherard, or Sherwood, botanist; Dil- 
lenius, ditto ; Bevil Higgons, poet and historian ; Bonwicke, master 
of Merchant Taylors' school ; sir William Trumbull, the correspond- 
ent of Pope ; Dr. Robert James, discoverer of the febrifuge powder ; 
Ducarel, antiquary ; Dr. Monro, one of Radcliffe's travelling Fellows ; 
Whalley, commentator on Shakspeare and Jonson; Samuel Bishop, 
poet ; dean Tucker, author of sundry tracts on politics and commerce. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY. 259 



JESUS COLLEGE. 

FOUNDED IN T57 I. 

Prelates. Rider, bishop of KOlaloe ; Lloyd, of St. Asaph ; Wynne, 
of ditto, father of sir William Wynne ; archbishop Usher was on the 
books, and resided here ; David Powell, the celebrated antiquary ; John 
Davies, lexicographer ; Rees Prichard, a popular Welsh poet ; James 
Howell, the leading miscellanist of his time ; sir Thomas Herbert, an 
eminent traveller, and benefactor to the university ; sir Wm. Williams, 
lawyer ; the pious Dr. Richard Lucas ; Edward Lloyd, antiquary and 
botanist, afterwards keeper of the Ashmolean Museum ; and the learned 
divines and theological writers Dr. William Worthington, Dr. Henry 
Owen, Dr. James Bandinel, the first Bampton lecturer. 



WADHAM COLLEGE. 

FOUNDED l6 I 3. 

Prelates. Among the principal are the names of Gauden, bishop of 
Worcester ; Seth Ward, of Salisbury ; Thomas Sprat, of Rochester ; 
and Samuel Parker, of Oxford. 

Creech, editor and translator of Lucretius ; Walsh, the poet ; Dr. J. 
Trapp, professor of poetry ; Thomas Baker, mathematician ; sir C. Sed- 
ley ; earl of Rochester ; admiral Blake ; Mayow, physician ; Dr. 
Hody ; sir Christopher When ;* Arthur Onslow, for many parlia- 

* " In his fourteenth year, Christopher was admitted as a gentleman commoner at 
Wadham college, Oxford. These were tender years for acquiring any sort of notice 
in a learned university ; and still more so for gaining the friendship of such men as 
John Wilkins, warden of Wadham, and Seth Ward, Savilian professor of astro- 
nomy, two of the most distinguished mathematicians of their day ; yet nothing is 
more certain than that he obtained both. His talents, if their fame had not gone 
before him, were soon discovered at Oxford. He loved what was fashionable in 
those days, to write Latin descriptions of his studies and designs, in verse as well as 
prose." 

A proud memory is connected with Wren's fame, from his share in the original 



260 OXFORD. 

ments speaker of the house of commons ; chief-justice Pratt ; Costard, 
linguist ; Harris, the philosopher of Salisbury ; Floyer Sydenham, the 
translator of Plato ; Kennicott, collator of the Hebrew MSS. ; Ri- 
chardson, author of the Persian dictionary; Anderson, who translated 
the Arenarius of Archimedes ; Dr. Austen ; the famous Bentley of 
Cambridge became a member of Wadham college in 1689. 



PEMBROKE COLLEGE. 

FOUNDED 1624. 

Prelates. Repingdon, bishop of Lincoln in 1405, and cardinal 1408. 
Bonner of London, surnamed the Bloody ; Dr. William Newcome, arch- 
bishop of Armagh, the biblical critic ; Dr. John Moore, archbishop of 
Canterbuiy. 

Camden, the illustrious historian and antiquary ; sir Thomas Browne ; 

plan of the Royal Society. " A young gentleman," says Allan Cunningham, " thus 
remarkable for talents and diligence, was a welcome addition to that little band of 
scientific scholars, who, says Sprat, resorted ' soon after the civil wars, to the 
chamber of Dr. Wilkins, and laid the foundation of the Royal Society for improving 
of natural knowledge.' Amid the unsettled days of the commonwealth, these 
scholars pursued their inquiries with all the zeal which genius brings to the aid of 
speculation ; drew up descriptions, and made models and drawings of their inven- 
tions and discoveries, formed connections with learned societies and individuals 
abroad, and looking forward to more settled or fortunate times, prepared a draught 
of the present charter of the Royal Society." 

None who have seen that majestic pile, the Theatre at Oxford, will think the fol- 
lowing reference devoid of interest — " This at all events was the first of his designs 
which he saw realized; for it was opened on the 9th of July, 1669, with great so- 
lemnity, and followed," says the author of Parentalia, "by a most splendid act, such 
as had not been equalled in the memory of man. The munificent founder (Gilbert 
Sheldon, archbishop of Canterbury) honoured the architect on this first essay of his 
skill with the present of a golden cup; and by his statutes appointed him, jointly 
with the vice-chancellor, perpetual curator of the fabric." The finished work, 
splendid as it is, cannot, however, be compared to the original design. Wren 
planned a structure bearing no small resemblance to the theatre of Marcellus, yet 
exceedingly bold and original. Nevertheless, the building is famous for a roof con- 
structed out of small pieces of timber on the truest geometrical principles. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY. 261 

Carew, earl of Totness ; sir James Dyer ; David Baker, ecclesiastical 
historian ; Pym, the noted patriot. In more recent times we find the 
celebrated names of judge Blackstone, who was first educated here ; 
Philip Morant, historian of Essex ; Whitfield ; Dr. Durell, principal 
of Hertford college ; the eccentric Henderson ; the poets, * Southern, 
Shenstone, Graves, and Hawkins, the professor of poetry ; Dr. Sa- 
muel Johnson, who was entered a commoner, Oct. 31, 1728. His 
apartment was the second floor over the gateway. 



WORCESTER COLLEGE. 

FOUNDED I 7 14. 

Gloucester Hall, afterwards St. John Baptist's Hall, and now, Wor- 
cester CoUege, was one of the most ancient houses belonging to the Be- 
nedictines at the time of the dissolution. 

Prelates. Before the Reformation, occur the names of three bishops, 
educated in Gloucester Hall; John Langdon, bishop of Rochester, 1422; 
Mylling, of Hereford ; Dunstan, of Llandaff, 1545, who had been prior, 
but lived to the reign of Elizabeth, and acknowledged her supremacy. 

In the same Hall were educated, and some time resided, the cele- 
brated traveller, Thomas Coryate ; Dr. Budden ; Thomas Allen, the 
mathematician ; Richard Lovelace, poet and linguist ; the learned sir 
Kenelm Digby ; De Quincey, the " Opium Eater." 

HERTFORD COLLEGE. 

FOUNDED I725. 

Prelates. James Cranlegh, archbishop of Dublin ; and Morgan Owen, 
bishop of Llandaff ; Dickson, bishop of Down and Connor ; and archbi- 
shop Newcome, already noticed as belonging to Pembroke ; are claimed 
by Hertford college. 

* Johnson delighted to mention the names of poets educated at his own college ; 
adding, (says that agreeable twaddler, Boswell,) with a smile of sportive triumph, 
" Sir, we are a nest of singing birds." 



262 OXFORD. 

Nicholas Brigham, and lord Buckhurst, poets ; the illustrious Sei- 
dell ; sir John Glynn, an eminent lawyer ; Dr. Donne, afterwards of 
Cambridge ; Nicholas Fuller, the greatest Hebrew critic of his time ; 
sir William Waller, the parliamentary general ; sir Richard Baker, au- 
thor of the popular Chronicle ; Edward Lye, the Saxon lexicographer ; 
Thomas Hutchinson, the editor of Xenophon ; Dr. Hunt, Arabic pro- 
fessor ; Dr. Benjamin Blayney ; and the illustrious Charles Fox, 
educated here under the tuition of Dr. Newcome. 



THE HALLS. 

Before the foundation of colleges, all education in the University was 
carried on in certain houses, and sets of buildings, called Halls, Inns, or 
Hostels, which were the property of the citizens of Oxford, who let 
them partially to individuals, or generally to societies connected under 
one roof, in which case they were denominated Halls. 



ST. ALBANS HALL. 

FOUNDED IN THE REIGN OP JOHN. 

Prelates. Hooper, bishop of Gloucester, and martyr ; Lamplugh, 
archbishop of York ; and Narcissus Marsh, primate of Ireland, were of 
this Hall ; which also enumerates among its scholars, Massinger, the 
dramatic poet ; William Lenthall, speaker to the house of commons 
during the long parliament ; and sir Thomas Higgons, an English 
writer of some note, and ambassador at Vienna ; the distinguished 
scholar and critic, Elmsley. 



EDMUND HALL. 

FOUNDED IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 

Carleton, bishop of Chichester, and Kennet of Peterborough, occur 
among the prelates who were educated or resided sometime in Edmund 



BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY. 263 

Hall. Among its eminent scholars are, sir W. Jones, the law-writer ; 
judge Jenkins ; Dr. Bate ; Dr. Newton, mathematician ; John Oldham, 
the poet; Kettlewell, the nonjuror, afterwards of Lincoln; Blackmore, 
the poet ; Chamberlaine, author of Anglim Notitia ; Humphrey Wanley, 
librarian ; Hearne, the antiquary ; Dr. Kennet ; Felton, author of a 
Dissertation on the Classics, &c. ; Mill, editor of the Greek Testament ; 
and Dr. Grabe. 



ST. MARY HALL. 

FOUNDED IN 1 3 25. 

The illustrious sir Thomas More ; sir Christopher Hatton, George 
Sandys, and Fulwell, poets ; Hariot, an eminent mathematician ; and 
Marchmont Needham, the political writer. 



NEW INN HALL. 

FOUNDED IN I39I. 

Twyne, the antiquary, and the Rev. Dr. Scott, author of the Chris- 
tian Life, &c. were members of this Hall. 



ST. MARY MAGDALEN HALL. 

FOUNDED IN 1480. 

Among its Prelates, Magdalen Hall enumerates John Longland, bi- 
shop of Lincoln ; Stokesley, bishop of London, and Wilkins, of Chester. 
Among its scholars are, Warner and Daniel, poets ; sir Harry Vane, 
the republican; sir Julius Caesar, a learned civilian; Leigh, theolo- 
gian; Lord Clarendon, the historian, who entered here in 1622; 
Tombes, whom Wood calls the Coryphaeus of the Anabaptists; sir 
Matthew Hale ; Dr. Godwin; Theophilus Gale, author of the Court 
of the Gentiles ; Dr. Sydenham; Pococke, afterwards of Corpus; Dr. 






264 BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY. &0 *ff 

Hickes, afterwards of Lincoln; Dr. Charleton; Edward Phillips, Mil- 
ton's nephew ; Dr. Plot, naturalist ; Dr. Tyson ; sir George Wheeler ; 
Dr. William Nichols, commentator on the Liturgy, &c. &c. 

The author is fully aware that omissions may be discovered in the 
preceding Summary ; and that splendid additions might be conferred on 
it by the many ornaments of later times. Should a future occasion offer 
itself, together with the adequate records, those additions will not be 
neglected. 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 

SATAN. Third edition, post Svo. boards, price 10s. 6d. 

Whence comest thou > From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up 
and down in it. (Job i. 7.) 

A UNIVERSAL PRAYER, DEATH, A VISION OF 

HEAVEN, AND A VISION OF HELL. Fourth edition. 8vo. 
js. 6d. boards. 

THE OMNIPRESENCE OF THE DEITY. Twelfth edi- 

tion, 9s. 6d. boards. 

Or complete works with general title-page, in 4 vols. 8vo. price il. 13s. 



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